{"id":2451614,"date":"2019-11-26T22:08:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T05:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/the-u-s-ski-team-once-dominated-birds-of-prey-can-they-do-it-again\/"},"modified":"2019-11-26T22:08:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T05:08:00","slug":"the-u-s-ski-team-once-dominated-birds-of-prey-can-they-do-it-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/the-u-s-ski-team-once-dominated-birds-of-prey-can-they-do-it-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Ski Team once dominated Birds of Prey \u2014 can they do it again?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
United States’ Luke Winters competes in an alpine ski, men’s slalom in Levi, Finland, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2019. (AP Photo\/Alessandro Trovati)<\/strong>
AP | AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The development of the Birds of Prey course at Beaver Creek over 20 years ago brought out the best in many racers \u2014 including and especially a trio of Americans with the surnames Miller, Rahlves and Ligety. Collectively, the three have 11 wins on a course known to test a racer\u2019s limits.<\/p>\n

Daron Rahlves, the oldest of the three, was the first to reach the podium at Birds of Prey, finishing second in the 2002 downhill. Marco Sullivan (sixth) and Bode Miller (eighth) were also in strong form that day \u2014 the first time three Americans finished in the top 10 of a World Cup downhill since 1972. Rahlves was 29 at the time, and though he had only been on a World Cup downhill podium three times to that point in his career, two of those trips were to the top step in back-to-back wins at Kvitfjell, Norway, at the end of the 1999-2000 season. Feisty and determined \u2014 and at 5-foot-8, 185 pounds, more compact than his rivals \u2014 he was also the surprise winner of the super-G at the 2001 World Championships in St. Anton, Austria, upsetting the favored Austrians Stephan Eberharter and Hermann Maier on their home snow. Six weeks after his Beaver Creek performance, Rahlves became the first American to win the fabled Kitzb\u00fchel downhill in 44 years.<\/p>\n

American ski racing history had a bright, new chapter to explore.<\/p>\n

In 2003, Rahlves would score the first of his two Birds of Prey downhill wins in a race moved to Beaver Creek from Val d\u2019Isere, France. Home snow, often described as grippy, suited Rahlves just fine, as it did for Miller, who first gained attention in 2002 when he won two silver medals (combined and giant slalom) at the Salt Lake Olympics. In 2004, Miller, then 27, made his first appearance on a Birds of Prey podium, finishing second in the super-G that opened the weekend of racing.<\/p>\n

Miller and Rahlves often talked about pushing each other to be the better racer in addition to their own internal motivations for success. It\u2019s a familiar scene across sports \u2014 what would Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic be without each other to challenge them? They also both liked the challenge of the Birds of Prey course, considered among the most difficult on the World Cup circuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to be getting in the gate and everybody to think: We\u2019ve got to watch,\u201d Rahlves said later in his career about his approach to racing. \u201cI love putting down exciting runs that get people going, \u2018Whoa.\u2019 That shock factor, blow people out of their mind with the stuff you pull off. You want to be pushing the limits, taking risks and tapping into your total limit.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the crowd\u2019s delight, Miller and Rahlves were one-two in the 2004 Birds of Prey downhill, one of five times they finished in the top two spots in their careers \u2014 with the added twist of a tie for first at Lenzerheide, Switzerland, later that season. Miller\u2019s victory was part of a 16-day dominance that saw him win in all four available events \u2014 slalom, GS, downhill and super-G \u2014 at the time only the second racer along with Marc Girardelli to achieve the feat in a single season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re happy with what you\u2019re doing, records don\u2019t mean much,\u201d said Miller, always one to speak his mind. \u201cI think it\u2019s just fun to ski four events.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2005, Rahlves got the top spot over Miller in the Birds of Prey downhill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI charged from the minute I left the gate all the way to the finish,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything came out and that\u2019s what I\u2019m most proud of, just skiing with my full heart, soul and every ounce of power and determination I could muster up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following day Miller led the one-two charge in the giant slalom. Erik Schlopy, who whacked his left hand on a gate hard enough to break it in the first run, was an agonizing one one-hundredth off the podium in fourth, prompting third-place finisher Kalle Palander (Finland) to quip he felt like he was at an American championship race. On the event\u2019s final day of racing, 21-year-old Ted Ligety would take his first step onto a World Cup podium with a third in the slalom, and wrap up a highly successful weekend in which Americans took five of 12 podium spots.<\/p>\n

THE SHRED BEGINS<\/p>\n

Ligety\u2019s first GS result at Birds of Prey, in 2005, belied his future success \u2014 a DNF in the first run. A year later, with one World Cup win under his belt, he claimed his first podium at Beaver Creek, and has been outside the top 10 only once in 13 races \u2014 a first run DNF in 2015. In the intervening 10 years, Ligety earned the \u201cMr. GS\u201d moniker in part due to his mastery of the Birds of Prey course: five World Cup victories in six attempts, including four successive wins between 2011-2014. A fifth consecutive triumph came at the 2015 World Championships before a raucous crowd. \u201cAny time you get a win in the U.S., it\u2019s awesome,\u201d said Ligety at one point during his streak.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, Ted, he should ski two or three gates more than the other skiers,\u201d said Marchel Hirscher after losing to Ligety by 1.76 seconds in 2012, a comment that drew a laugh from the assembled media. Said Ligety at the time: \u201cI\u2019m skiing fast. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m skiing at a different level. I think a lot of other guys have made mistakes. It\u2019s tough to say exactly what it is, but I feel like I\u2019m skiing well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now focusing solely on giant slalom, Ligety would love to recapture the magic that produced three successive GS World Championships (2011, 2013, 2015) as well as three golds in a single championship (2013 at Schladming, Austria, in GS, combined and super-G); an Olympic gold (2014); 17 wins out of 31 races across four seasons, and five career GS discipline titles.<\/p>\n

Injuries and Hirscher \u2014 who redefined the sport Ligety himself had redefined \u2014 took their toll in recent years, but Ligety is again ready to charge. Hirscher is now retired from ski racing, and yet a field of challengers is lined up to try and fill Hirscher\u2019s spot and dethrone Ligety, who has been the undisputed top GS competitor of Birds of Prey over the past 10 years.<\/p>\n

It has fans asking: Could history repeat itself?<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United States’ Luke Winters competes in an alpine ski, men’s slalom in Levi, Finland, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2019. (AP Photo\/Alessandro Trovati)AP | AP The development of the Birds of Prey course at Beaver Creek over 20 years ago brought out the best in many racers \u2014 including and especially a trio of Americans with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2451614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 04:39:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2451614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2451614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2451614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2451614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}