2008 Val d'Isere Men's DH & Super Combined
The races were held on the Bellevarde face, on a slightly modified track used in the 1992 Olympics. Bellevarde is the peak slightly left of center in this photo, you can see bits of the track.
Looking up to the finish pitches from the gondola building.
The Course starts on top of the mountain, just below the radio antenna...
...crosses an access tunnel from the gondola...
...enters a flat traverse to the Bellevarde Face...
...goes through a narrow choke...
...off the first jump into a compression (also the SC start location)...
Looking back up into the compression
...exits the compression into a traverse which leads to a big left-foot carousel to a road...
...exits the road onto an open face...
...enters a narrow shot at the end of the face...
...and goes into a hard left-footer into a rock choke...
...which exits just above the slalom start and onto an open pitch with a slight fallaway left...
...rolling to the right through a bowl and onto the finish jump and pitch...
...and ends in a large finish corral. The slalom enters from skier's left into the same corral.
We got 2 nice DH training runs in, but the weather hit hard before the downhill, so the race was cancelled. The face is very steep and susceptible to avalanches. in the pictures you can see loads of avvy fences, and we got about 30cm (12") of snow onto the pitch. Nothing slid, but on our rock-hard course (they injected over 150,000 cubic meters of water), it could have really been ugly. However, for the Super Combined, we had a postcard-perfect day.
A perfect dawn over the course.
Karl and Ben Black
Airshow before the SC DH start
Karl hopped in and shagged gates for the SL course setter. Hump counted them.
Didier Cuche in the SC SL start
Slovenian skier (Perko?) I can't see the bib.
Bode had about 1.3S lead after the DH, so he skied smart and won.
Johno McBride
Marco Buechel supervises the Slacker Crew.
Sylvain was very, very patient with Karl.
Karl, blocking a very nice view of the Col d'Iseran. It goes in the valley just behind his head, starting in town below. The 2007 Tour de France started in Val d'Isere and rode this pass.
Hump at the SC-DH start.
Damn right, I want some wine with that cheese. the food in Val d'Isere is fantastic. But truly, the best sport in town is watching British tourists carry their skis. We did not get any pictures, mainly because we were standing slack-jawed in disbelief at what they were doing.