SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM, Austria (AP) — At age 40, Italian skier Christof Innerhofer has been around long enough to have competed in three different versions of the combined.
First, there was the grueling three-run race that included one downhill leg and two slalom legs. That was discarded about 15 years ago because it heavily favored slalom specialists and lasted all day long.
When Ted Ligety won the gold in the last Olympic race of the old combined, it concluded at night under the lights at the 2006 Turin Games.
Then came the more balanced super-combined that included only one downhill run and one slalom run, which Bode Miller won at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and seemed decent until there were hardly any skiers left who could race competitively in both disciplines.
Now there’s a new team combined event that made its debut at the world championships this week and will also be contested at the Olympics for the first time at next year’s Milan-Cortina Games.
The team combined consists of one skier racing in a downhill run and another in a slalom run, with their two times added together to determine the final results.
Breezy Johnson and Mikaela Shiffrin won gold in the women’s event on Tuesday, and Franjo von Allmen and Loic Meillard led a Swiss sweep in the men’s event on Wednesday.
“I like it,” Innerhofer said. “It was right to change the format. People like it. You win and lose together now with this kind of team.”
When Shiffrin came down in first after Johnson had placed fourth in the downhill, Johnson came running out into the finish area to embrace her teammate.
The same thing happened during the men’s event, which ended with a six-man Swiss group hug.
The combined was the first Alpine skiing event introduced to the Olympics, at the 1936 Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
Innerhofer won a silver in super-combined at the 2011 worlds and a bronze at the 2014 Sochi Olympics in that format and, while he appreciates the new team version, he thinks the medals are worth “much less” now.
“I did it all alone,” Innerhofer said, adding that now “it looks a little bit like a school race where you say, ‘Hey, you go by downhill, you by slalom,’ Or, ‘You run, I swim.’
“I think people like it because they see the best slalom racers and the best downhillers,” Innerhofer added. “But these medals will never have the same value.”
Swiss all-arounder Lara Gut-Behrami, who competes in every event except slalom, is a fan of the new version.
In the old event, “you only had three or four athletes to watch,” Gut-Behrami said. “It’s not a good product to sell. I think today this was a really good product to sell, to see in television. So if (combined) has a future, I think it’s this one.”
While each nation can add up to four teams in the event, it excludes nations featuring prominent racers without a counterpart in the other discipline — like with Lucas Pinheiro Braathen of Brazil, Ester Ledecka of the Czech Republic and Petra Vlhova of Slovakia.
“I would prefer the old format, but it was fun to be competing with Stefan (Babinsky),” Marco Schwarz, an Austrian all-arounder who won gold, silver and bronze at previous worlds in super-combi, said after falling in the slalom leg Wednesday.
Added Italian downhiller Bryce Bennett: “Combined got to a point where there’s no way you can be competitive in slalom. So now someone else is competitive for you in the slalom. I think it’s a super-cool event.”
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing
Andrew Dampf, The Associated Press
