3rd place for Finlay Mickel.

BORMIO, Italy, Feb. 1st - 2005. Great Britain's Finlay Mickel achieved another strong training run Tuesday morning on the Stelvio course, clocking the third best time. On Monday, he already finished among the best-10!
The 27-year-old Scotsman was just half a second behind the fastest man of the day, Austria's Christoph Gruber. The 2002 Olympic Champion Fritz Strobl, a former winner here, came in 2nd.

Interestingly enough, Mickel's best career finish in downhill was at Bormio last December when he finished 13th in the World Cup race won by Austria's Johann Grugger. He also reached the top-20 in Wengen three weeks ago.
Yet the Brit didn't want to give too much importance to his performance.
“I think that most of the other top skiers were not skiing at 100%, some hit the brakes near the finish line so I expect most of them to be faster on race day. It's only our second timed trial and the race only takes place in four days,” Mickel said afterwards.

The tall and slim champion from Edinburgh who has to go home next week to start to prepare his wedding on April 16th, added he has been inspired by Bode Miller's past runs on this slope. He studied him with great attention and found a new way to cruise down the demanding Stelvio course. “I looked at his line in the Super-G turns and it was obvious that he was extremely relaxed between his turns,” Mickel explained. “He is just rolling the edges and driving his ski, that mostly what he was doing. It looks so smooth and nice. I did the opposite - I was too active between the turns and trying to force everything. So my focus in the start today was just to be as relaxed as possible in the turns and roll from one edge to the other.”

29th in the downhill World Cup standings

Finlay Mickel, who competes since November 2000 on the World Cup tour, belongs to a small British team formed by proud and happy Scotsmen, is helped by the U.S. team which allows him to get information and watch its video. This also helps him to better observe the specific technique of Bode Miller who won the first two downhill races of the season.

“It's always possible to learn something from a great skier as him and I even believe there are some similarities between his attitude and my own one. I enjoy his way of skiing.”

“I watched Bode a lot and learned some tricks from him but he is still an amazing skier,” added Finlay. “He is a strong-minded athlete who follows his own rules so it's not possible to copy him but you can learn one or two key things from him.”

Mickel was very happy to see his name in the upper part of the scoreboard but this doesn't really affect his plan for the coming days. “I don't know if I will also compete in the combined on Thursday but I just want to have a fun day on Saturday,” he said. “I don't want to put any pressure on me as I did in the past. I have learned a lot from some bad experiences. The most important for me this winter is to be consistent and remain among the top-30's in the rankings. After a break next week, I'll compete in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and then in Norway. I'm 29th in the World Cup standings and there are three races left to improve my position and eventually compete at the Finals in Switzerland. It would surely be great.”

Patrick Lang