Race Report: Mammoth Super G

by Bill Schenker

A wise old man once said you can’t have a bad day of Super G. You might go slow, you might go fast, but no matter what, you’re going to have fun!

Two days and four Super Gs at Mammoth Mountain last Friday and Saturday proved that to be true yet again.  

With bright blue skies, plenty of well packed snow (I know you Tahoe folks are jealous of what we Mammoth Masters are getting to train on) and only moderate winds - sometimes even a tail wind - yay! Pierre Jeangirard set a fast and flowing course, and the Mammoth Race Dept. prepared an amazing track that kept us safe; starting on Hair Jump, through the always challenging compression at the bottom of Hair Jump, and onto the World Cup run. From there onto the flat past the base of Chair 23 and into a corridor of gates leading onto the top of Terry’s Run….And that’s where things got tricky.

That corridor ran very fast and led to a blind gate over a knoll that needed a strong left legged turn….which needed to be on the snow, and not up in the air! D’oh!

The course then went to my always favorite part of running Super G at Mammoth - the steep pitch of Terry’s. The course flowed really well and FAST down that pitch - so much fun - then grab your tuck and into yet another compression - onto the flat leading into the last few gates to the finish.

One needed a strong left leg to get through that compression. Those last few gates led to a line that brought you VERY close to the finish gate. Not many more things are as thrilling as watching the tip of your 202cm skis missing that gate by a few inches at 64.4MPH.

After that fun trip, we went right back up and ran another race on the same course, which held up very well. The local boys and girls dominated, with both the fastest man and woman, and placed 7 racers in the top Ten.

*****

Day 2 started with an unforecasted cloud bank socking in the top half of the course. After a well called one hour delay, the sun came out to give us another beautiful day. This time the course was 10 seconds longer and challenged us to make clean turns.

And like the first day, Erik Nelson was perfection: he was pushed by Ara Papazian, but swept all four races in a true master display.