World championship downhills amid safety debate

By John Bagratuni Feb 10, 2011, 12:27 GMT

Garmisch-Partenkirchen - The blue riband downhills are on the skiing world championship agenda on the weekend amid a renewed debate on safety in the high-speed discipline.

Skiers, coaches, officials and university labs are trying to find what race director Guenter Hujara named 'the right algorithm' to protect racers if something goes wrong at speeds of up to 140kph.

The super-g races earlier in the week gave skiers a first taste of what to expect on the world championship Kandahar pistein Garmisch Partenkirchen: a bumpy and icy course in difficult visibility as most of it lies in the shade.

World Cup leader Ivica Kostelic said after his super-g bronze the course was 'at the limit for the human body.'

'It is similar to Kitzbuehel, it is either the course or you (who wins),' he said.

In Kitzbuehel, on the world's most demanding Streif course, Austrian Hans Grugger crashed at the Mausefalle (mouse trap) jump and required emergency surgery on severe head injuries in mid-January. It remains unclear whether he will make a full recovery.

The following week, team-mates Mario Scheiber and Goerg Streitberger injured themselves out of the season in Chamonix, France, and so did Canadian Manuel Osborne-Paradis.

The men's downhill on Saturday will also take place without reigning champion John Kucera of Canada, sidelined since a complicated leg fracture during a December 2009 race. Olympic gold medallist Didier Defago ruptured the cruciate knee ligament in pre-season training and is also out.

'Safety comes before spectacle. We are doing our best but there will always be a risk,' said Gian Franco Kasper, President of the ruling body FIS, adding that the latest crashes were the result of skiing errors rather than piste conditions.

The FIS is working together with researchers at Salzburg university to identify the main injury risks as part of an injury surveillance system in the key areas of course setting/speed, snow conditions and equipment (ski, binding, plate, boot).

New, less aggressive, skis have been developed and their prototypes tested by former World Cup racers, with race director Atle Skaardal speaking of 'promising directions' in this area.

Following the example of motorcycling, the FIS also started looking into the possibility of airbags in race suits to protect skiers, with for instance forerunners equipped with sensors providing data.

Hujara expressed his hope that prototypes will be available two years from now but also pointed at the difficulties to avoid false ignition.

In motorcycling, the airbag is ignited when both feet of the rider leave the bike and the body starts a forward rotation, i.e. goes over the bike.

Things are not as easy in skiing. Hujara named one foot higher than the hip as an imminent-danger factor, but that skiers have also avoided crashes in this situation.

'We have to find the algorithm when the system ski racer is overloaded, when all forces come together,' said Hujara.

Looking at head injuries, Hujara said that not even the helmets used with foam similar to Formula One racing could protect skiers in such cases as Grugger because the acceleration of the head, or better of the brain against the skull, caused the severe injuries, something a helmet can not prevent.

However, according to studies from an Oslo-based sports trauma centre, head injuries make up only 10 per cent of the skiing injuries which concern every third racer in the sport. More than half of the 189 recorded cases concern the legs, 36 per cent the knees.

As a result, the German team for instance was looking into a special knee protector under the race suit. German men's coach Karlheinz Waibel spoke of positive tests, but skiers are still not using it because they believe it is worsening their performance.

'As long as the pressure isn't big enough they are saying 'let's do without it,'' said Waibel.

Scheiber freely admitted to being 'scared' skiing in Kitzbuehel in the wake of Grugger's crash, but nonetheless came fourth as he, like the majority of racers, accepts the risk.

'Many athletes are talking about safety. They all have respect. But we should not make too much of a drama out of it. Downhill is downhill. Downhill is spectacular. We want to be fast and safe, but rather fast than 100 per cent safe,' said Norwegian super-g Olympic champion Aksel Lund Svindal.

Skiers acknowledge that FIS has improved safety on the courses in the wake of crashes, with extensive safety nettings and blue course- markers now standard at every race along with regular communication between skiers and race officials .

Hujara also told the athletes to do their share, saying that FIS rules allow every area of the body to be protected as long as the body shape isn't changed. Like Waibel he observed that skiers are not making full use of it.

'The rules allow for more than is used,' he said.