GUAY OFF TO DISAPPOINTING START
Finishes 17th in men's downhill season opener
The fans flocked to ski racer Erik Guay at the bottom of the mountain after yesterday's World Cup downhill. He obligingly scribbled his autograph on everything - ski jackets, helmets, little cow bells, and even moon boots.
It was star treatment for an athlete who felt like more like a meteor that had just crashed and burned.
Max Gartner, Alpine Canada's chief athletic officer, felt the race would be a good test of Guay's mettle under pressure, the kind of thing he'll have to get used to en route to the February Winter Olympics in Turin and down the road for the 2010 Games in Vancouver.
This was the first time he raced while considered to be among the top contenders for a medal, but a number of costly mistakes in the race saw him wind up a disappointing 17th.
"It's a question of nerves," said the 24-year-old from Mont Tremblant. "I might have choked a little bit today."
A harsh assessment, but this a young man who demands a lot of himself. He'd been second on this very same course in a World Cup downhill two years ago, but that result came when there were few expectations on him. He said he did feel more pressure entering yesterday's race than ever before.
"I think everybody was looking for me to be at least in the top 10, myself included," said Guay. "If I disappoint other people, it's doesn't even compare to the way I'm feeling."
The conditions changed overnight and the flat light and choppy course seemed to require more of a veteran touch. The average age of the three skiers on the podium - reigning Olympic champion Fritz Strobl of Austria, runnerup Norwegian Kjetil-Andre Aamodt and Marco Buechel of Liechtenstein - was 34.
Strobl had no worries about the race. He was too busy fretting about whether a team official could retrieve his racing suit in time after he forgot it in his hotel room. He got it with about 20 minutes to spare.
"If he (the team official) had not been so fast, I would have had to go down in my underwear," said Strobl, who races in a bright green helmet that's reminiscent of the Great Gazoo from the Flintstones.
Guay took note of Strobl's performance.
"If you look at the training runs of some of the guys like Fritz Strobl, they were pretty far out but on race day they know what to do," he said. "They know how to put it down. Hopefully, that's what I'm going to learn."
Among those with full confidence that Guay will acquire that skill is original Crazy Canuck Steve Podborski, the only Canadian to ever win the overall World Cup downhill title.
"The whole notion of having a young man his age have all the tools already is preposterous," said Podborski.
"He's now learning how to deal with the biggest challenge of all - dealing with his own internal pressure and some things he perceives from the outside. He just needs to learn the last few things to be the very best in the world."
Austrian star Hermann Maier has watched Guay progress on the World Cup and also thinks he's got the right stuff.
"He's very fast and he's young," said the Herminator. "He's the future."
Defending champion Bode Miller of the U.S. had a rough outing, losing an edge seconds into the race as he was trying to get into a tuck and struggling to stay vertical most of his way down the course to finish a distant 22nd.