Let it snow

Warm weather is playing havoc with the world's skiers

Earlier this week I was standing with skier Daron Rahlves in the driveway of his home in Truckee, Calif., a tourist/cowboy town at the base of the Sierras on the Nevada border. It was getting dark, and a beautiful, full moon illuminated a fresh snowpack and gave me an excuse to prattle on with a little descriptive prose. You want more? Bare trees, intense stars, majestic peaks. It's a beautiful place, no lie. But none of this is the point.

On the last weekend in November, Rahlves shouldn't have been standing in his driveway in Truckee, running his four-month-old husky, Nation, and talking with a sportswriter. (Although I appreciated it, and he's a terrific story that I will try to do justice in the pages of Sports Illustrated). He should have been in the Rockies, getting ready to ski World Cup downhill and Super-G races in Beaver Creek, Colo. Problem is, those races were wiped out by warm weather, so Rahlves and the rest of the world's speed skiers have forced to sit and wait for their first races, now scheduled for next Saturday and Sunday in Val d'Isere, France.

It has been that type of early season for the U.S. ski team, and for most of the rest of the world's best, as well. Throughout the latter part of October and well into November, U.S. ski team members, nearing the end of training for a home-hill Olympics, chased small pockets of snow across North America. During the first two weeks of November, most of the top nations in the world tried to cram their teams onto a few precious runs at high-altitude resorts at Copper Mountain and Loveland, Colo. Some days, U.S. training was limited to 90 minutes on crowded runs. Picabo Street got kicked off the hill one day for skiing too fast among the masses. Men played basketball in the afternoon. ("Skiers playing basketball,'' said Rahlves. "Not a pretty sight.'') Women's World Cup races scheduled for Aspen were moved to Copper; the men's Beaver Creek runs were killed.

Rahlves, for one, was hugely bummed out by the cancellations. "I was looking forward to starting my season off right at Beaver Creek,'' he told me. This is a guy with genuine medal possibilities in Salt Lake City. He won the Super-G at the worlds last winter and loves the Snowbasin downhill and Super-G courses in Utah. What's more, for Rahlves, standing still is painful. Imagine his relief when a storm dumped two feet of powder on the Sierras last weekend, giving him a chance to ski Sunday at the Sugar Bowl resort, where a run from the top is named after him.

By Monday evening, he was bouncing off the walls in his house, waiting for a call from U.S. coach Dale Stephens to tell him if he would be leaving for Europe the next morning. His bags lay packed on the floor in the hallway, ready for transport.

These could be a terrific Olympics for the U.S. ski team. They could be more like Lillehammer in '94 (two gold, two silver medals) than Nagano in '98 (only Street's gold in Super-G). Rahlves is among the best men's speed skiers in the world (plus, The Hermann-ator is probably out, and fellow Austrian teammate Hans Trinkl fractured his skull in a fall and will miss a month; two huge losses that open the field), and teammates Bode Miller and Eric Schlopy are slalom and giant slalom threats.

On the women's side, the remarkable Street finished sixth in the first World Cup downhill Thursday at Lake Louise, Canada, and fifth in the second, a promising start after what amounts to a three-year comeback from a horrific '98 leg and knee injury. Behind her, a handful of solid skiers (Kirsten Clark, Sarah Schleper, Jonna Mendes, Katie Monahan and Carolina Lalive) will draw on the experience of having been thrown in the fire four years ago. Clark was eighth in the second Lake Louise DH.

First, of course, they all need to race. To train. To get ready. To find some snow. Women's races scheduled for Val d'Isere have been postponed; snow is slow in falling in Europe, as well. "We're skiers,'' says Rahlves. "That makes us slaves to weather. Can't let it bother you.''

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

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