She sent Cyprien Sarrazin to the mat, and so many others before him. The Stelvio, the downhill track from Bormio in the Dolomites, has the pedigree of being the most dangerous on the circuit. “It's a week in hell,” says our consultant Johan Clarey, “fifteen race starts on this track in my career. It's really a very difficult week to live through, emotionally and psychologically. I always went there with a lump in my stomach . If there is one satisfaction in having stopped my career, it is not returning to Bormio.” But what makes this trail so difficult? And above all, why is this very dangerous track still on the calendar? Attempts at explanations.
To put it simply, the Stelvio is a wall, often icy, three kilometers long, which can be descended in just under two minutes at dizzying speeds. “The start is absolutely dizzying, even if you don't realize it on TV. In 10-15 seconds, you reach 130 km/h, you sink into a sort of canal from where you spring at 150 km/h” details Johan Clarey, as if he were remaking the descent he had “hated”. “There is no respite on this slope. It's a mixture of turns with constant pressure on the legs which are extremely tiring, especially with the icy slope. Plus, you can't see anything, you ski in the shadow. All of this combined makes it chew you up little by little.”
Skiers on survival for a downhill slurry?
The fall of Cyprien Sarrazin and the skiers who arrive at the hospital like the Italian Pietro Zazzi, also evacuated by helicopter on Friday for a double tibia-fibula fracture, “this happens every week” puts Clarey into perspective. And that won’t necessarily be on everyone’s minds. To win, competitors take crazy risks. “Apart from three or four who will try to ski a poorly prepared slope, the others will be more in survival than anything else, predicts the Olympic downhill vice-champion. It's not skiing that I like, that It's going to be disgusting (sic)”.
To make matters worse, the conditions at the start of winter are not favorable to the good quality of the track. FIS racing director Markus Waldner blamed strong winds which blew away all the fresh snow over Christmas, making the track very icy. And the low light doesn't help anything either. This is why our consultant qualifies the comments made by Nils Allègre after the race.
Marco Odermatt (Switzerland) will be the big favorite to succeed Cyprien Sarrazin at Bormio
Credit: Getty Images
Cyprien Sarrazin's compatriot declared that the track where the downhill Olympic Games will be held next year “didn’t deserve to have them.” “In February, there are other conditions with less hard snow and it becomes a little nicer and a little more skiable,” tempers Clarey. The 42-year-old skier still points to a slope “within reason“and which when it is poorly prepared goes from “very difficult to abominable“.
Ever more radical adjustments to find performance
To understand how this is possible, you need to look at the regulations. “There are no criteria for the quality of the preparation of the track, he points out. The only criterion is the lack of snow which means that the race is canceled behind. But I have no never seen a race canceled because of the potential danger of the track, we always go to the end”, simply explains the former downhiller. The risk is inherent in the descent, but in Bormio, it is increased tenfold and requires very specific adjustments.
“In Bormio, you either have grip or you don't have any at all. It's black or white.” To gain grip, we sharpen the edges of the skis as much as possible, like “razor blades”. What constitutes another major risk, in addition to the shock of a fall, is that at any time skiers “can be cut in all directions”according to the colorful expression used by Clarey and illustrated by the misadventure of Aleksander Aamodt Kilde in Wengen last year.
Aamodt Kilde: “I'm done with the chair”
Video credit: Eurosport
These adjustments made in the direction of performance to the detriment of safety are precisely what the International Ski Federation denounces. “We went beyond the limit on the equipment,” complained FIS race director Markus Waldner in Bormio this Friday.
Which slopes to keep skiers safe?
Another material, this one safe, could help to counterbalance risk-taking. The airbag, an innovation that has arrived on the slopes in recent years, Johan Clarey is positioning itself so that it becomes “obligatory”, even if he did not use it at the end of his career in 2022. “I was in my final years, I didn’t want to change everything”he justifies himself.
If he also recommends making anti-cut undersuits compulsory, he thinks it is possible to slow down skiers by playing with outfits, which are increasingly aerodynamic. “All manufacturers are trying to develop more and more effective suits to be able to cut through the air and it works. So if we manage to find regulations where we impose a much less effective fabric on everyone, we can largely lose three to four seconds on a descent”he predicts. The ideas are there, it is now urgent to act.
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