The January Classics - Wengen

As a freelance journalist / itinerant ski bum, I am lucky enough to get to see the world’s most incredible mountains, sort of eking out a living. My usual beat: the Alps. For the last decade, I’ve spent the better part of my winters exploring mega-resorts that would dwarf my home hill (sometimes referred to laughingly as the “Big One”), as well as little-known mom-and-pop resorts with nothing but a few dodgy lifts and unparalleled access to big, uncrowded peaks. The feeling of exploration, and the amount of ground you can cover in Europe - be it by train, car, tram, poma lift, and of course, your skis – is staggering.

But this January, I had a different assignment: the World Cup. Hitting the ground in Geneva on Christmas day, I was on a month-long trail of “the classics”, the oldest and most revered races of the circuit. Adelboden, Wengen, Kitzbühel were all names I had heard and places I had seen on Wide World of Sports, but never in person. With a fresh press pass and course credentials, I was off to follow the White Circus for a month.

Ever since seeing Redford as David Chapellet in Downhill Racer, the Lauberhorn has been high on my to do list. While not as downright gnarly as the Hahnenkamm, at 4.5 km and over two-and-a-half minutes long, it’s the most demanding. You have it all: a sickening jump through a couloir (the Hundschopf), sections named after particularly bad crashes (Canadian Corner, the Kernan-S turns), the famous tunnel (where Redford stuffed his teammate Johnny Creech into the wall), and a finish jump about 2:28 into the race that has ended several real-life careers. And it all takes place in a train-only accessed Swiss village in the shadow of the Eiger and the Jungfrau. It’s an epic race in an epic venue.

I was staying in the Falken, a turn-of-the-century Grand Hotel in every sense of the word. And so was the entire Italian team, their technicians setting up shop on the glassed-in porch with hundreds of pairs of skis. Every night, the Canadian team would challenge all comers on the ice rink with pickup hockey games running until the lights went out. Wengen is a magical scene, and in the 75 years they have run the Lauberhorn, not much has changed in the town itself.

A half-meter of snow fell the day before the DH, and the Swiss Army struggled to clear the course. The next day it broke blue and perfect for the race at 1pm. I skied a couple of long, lazy pow laps off the top of Mannlichen, working toward Kleine Scheidegg. Nobody skis off-piste in Wengen, and we lapped the ridgelines just like the Sundance Kid. Outside the mid-mountain train station, I inhaled a rösti with US team motivator “Baby Huey” (the guy you always hear in the starthouse, screaming “COME ON BODE!”) and Team America coach Forrest Carey, and was having a Redford day with my girlfriend perfectly playing the part of Camilla Sparv, right down to the tight one-piece. And then it was time for inspection.

I scored a course pass for race day, and as I looked out of the starthouse, I could see what every racer sees just before they jump into the longest couple of minutes of their lives. The Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau; the triumvirate of fabled peaks with cascading glaciers, helicopters buzzing like mosquitoes, Swiss fighter jets. It was mayhem. I shoved off on the bulletproof icepack (note: do NOT ski a World Cup DH course on Fritschi’s) and headed into the top section of the course. Sweeping s-turns, wide-open and cruisy. Then a couple of jumps and the setup for the Hundschopf…they had it roped off until the race, but HOLY S%&T. The margin for error is non-existent. Racers easily go 100’-120’ off the lip and down into Canadian Corner, a fall-away carousel turn that pulls you toward the netting like a tractor beam. Then the Kernan-S, which provides another great opportunity to pack it into the “orange room” and under the Water Station tunnel. Then the gliding section and a few tough s-turns before the “Ziel-sprung”, or finish jump. The stands were still pretty empty, but I sat in the finish area huffing and reveling in the moment. Definitely a top-3 lifetime experience on skis.

I jumped back on the train to get one more look before the race began, and running late, I flashed my media cred’s and jumped on an empty car. Empty, except for the Hermannator and his coaches. Hermann Maier, at the end of his legendary career, has had a tough season. Struggling with equipment, not posting the results he is used to. The ride up was a quiet one, to say the least.

The race went off with a bang, and Bode Miller absolutely killed the course, taking his first victory of the season and surpassing Phil Mahre on the all-time list. Apparently going his own way from the US team was working well. And to quote Gene Hackman’s character from Downhill Racer, to Creech, sitting in a hospital bed, complaining that Redford wasn’t a “team player”… “Well, skiing isn’t exactly a team sport, is it?”

And just like that, I was off to Kitzbühel for the Hahnenkamm. But that’s another story.