Downhill cancelled

Patrick Lang 02.02.2008 14:00 Uhr

The men’s World Cup downhill scheduled to take place on Saturday morning had to be cancelled at 8.45 AM by the race jury because of the heavy snowfalls affecting Val d’Isère and this part of the French Alps.

“It started to snow hard at the end of the night, between 4 and 5 AM and our volunteers immediately went on the course to start preparing it,” explained Emmanuel Couder, president of the Vql d’Isere’s Club des Sports. “We got around twenty centimetres of fresh snow at the top and a little less at the bottom,” Couder added.

“Nearly 250 course workers, mostly ski instructors, ski patrollers, firemen and soldiers started to clean the course at 5 PM. Our goal was to postpone the start of the downhill to 1 PM – and have the racers starting inspection at 10 AM.”

“Unfortunately, this plan eventually proved unrealisable since it was not possible to bring snowcats on the slope, which would have been badly damaged. As you know, everything must be ready on course before the beginning of the inspection. The slope had to be cleaned up, safety nets put in place and the course partly coloured in blue. There was just not enough time for us to prepare everything in time so we decided to concentrate our effort on the Super-combined event instead.”

“We are not working on both downhill and slalom runs. The slalom course is ready, it’s just a matter of removing the fresh snow fallen in the night. Everybody will remain the entire day on the mountain and also overnight if necessary.”

“The weather forecast is positive for the moment, Sunday should be a nice day,” also said Couder. “We plan to start the Super-combined downhill at 10.30 AM and the slalom at 13.30.”