World's top skiers take on challenging mystery of Beijing 2022 slopes

Veteran Italian downhiller Christof Innerhofer and Austrian two-time Olympic champion Mattias Meyer say the steep slopes course for Sunday's Olympic downhill present a tough challenge for the world's best.

None of the skiers battling for gold in the races which begin on Sunday in China have ever taken on the slopes of the course 80 kilometres outside of Beijing.

No one, though, is allowed to ski on the actual track that will be used for racing until Thursday, the first of three official training days planned ahead of the men's downhill, which is scheduled to open the alpine program on Sunday. This track is new to everyone because Beijing is not a regular stop on the World Cup circuit, the usual pre-Olympics test events were called off because of the coronavirus pandemic and teams agreed to not check it out unless everyone could.

So there are more unanswered questions — and "layers of complexity," in former U.S. Olympian Ted Ligety's words — for the athletes and their coaches than there usually are. About the pace, for example, or the topography. And that could lead to problems when the competition begins.

"Nobody really knows what we're getting into there. But I think that that's exciting," said River Radamus, who is from Colorado and on his first Olympic team. "The more variables there are, the more people I know are going to take themselves out of the race. When there's adversity or whatever, sort of accepting that and knowing that you're going into the unknown is sort of empowering, because you know that there's other people that aren't going to be able to have that same mindset."

"At first glance it seemed to me a different track from World Cup ones," Innerhofer said in comments reported by Gazzetta dello Sport.

"On a scale between 0 and 10 I would say that the difficulty of the descent is 7," added the downhill silver medallist from Sochi in 2014.

The course is made up entirely of artificial snow and is set in hills without any natural snow in sight.

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Innerhofer said while the course does not feature any major big jumps it has "several bumps" similar to the Olympic course four years ago at Pyeongchang in South Korea.

The Italian said that overall the Yanqing course, which has been designed by Swiss expert Bernhard Russi, should present more of a challenge than that offered in 2018.

In downhill, veteran skiers have an edge on many World Cup courses used year after year. They learn the intricacies — every little bump, jump and turn — and perfect the racing line over time, helping shave hundredths of seconds off their times.

In one respect, the uncertainty in Beijing could add to the danger quotient, something that already always is present in a sport with faster-than-an-American-highway speeds on slick slopes at intimidating angles.

Some view the situation as a great equalizer, because no one will derive any sort of advantage from past experience.

"It's not scary. It's good," said Vincent Kriechmayr, an Austrian who won the downhill and super-G at last year's world championships. "It's the same for everybody."

And then there also are those, such as 2018 Olympic downhill champion Sofia Goggia of Italy, who think the limited opportunities to ski the mountain and try to learn its ins and outs ahead of time could end up favoring the quickest learners in the group.

Wind could be disruptive

"Who is good at studying things, and studying details, remembering them, is going to be [at an] advantage," Goggia said.

Italy's downhill coach Alberto Ghidoni warned wind could be a disruptive factor and said the slopes certainly posed a challenge.

"It is not easy, they are very steep slopes," he said, "They are not exactly tourist slopes even if they want to use them [later] to teach people to ski here," he added.

"In addition to the wind, another factor to consider will be that of the skis. The first day the bottom seemed a bit 'dirty', as if there was sand in the snow, so the edge of the skis is at risk."

The only men's world-class ski racer who's seen it all for himself is retired: Didier Defago, who won the Vancouver Games downhill gold for Switzerland in 2010 and left the World Cup circuit in 2015. His input gives ski officials a sense of whether the hill is ready for racing.

Two time Olympic champion Mattias Meyer of Austria also believes the course won't be an easy one for the speed specialists to negotiate.

"It's as expected, the snow reminds me of North America. The terrain looks good, relatively steep, it should be challenging," he said.

The male downhillers will have three days of practice on the slopes before the opening medal event on Sunday.

The women begin a day later on the technical slope with the giant slalom.