Races
In all forms of Downhill, both at a local youth-level as well as the higher FIS international level, racers are allowed extensive preparation for the race, which includes daily course inspection and discussion with their coaches and teammates as well as several practice runs before the actual race. Racers do not make any unnecessary turns while on the course, and try to do everything they can to maintain the most aerodynamic position while negotiating turns and jumps.
Unlike Slalom and Giant Slalom, where racers have two combined times, in the Downhill, the race is a single "run." Times are typically between 1:30 (1 minute, 30 seconds) and 2:30 for World Cup courses and must be over 1 minute in length to meet international minimum standards. Tenths and hundredths and, occasionally, thousandths of seconds count: World Cup races and Olympic medals have sometimes been decided by as little as one or two hundredths of a second, and ties are not unheard of.
The most successful all-time winners of World Cup Downhill races are Annemarie Moser-Pröll of Austria (36 wins, 7 women's titles) and Franz Klammer of Austria (25 wins, 5 men's titles). Lindsey Vonn of the U.S. is currently dominant in woman's downhill racing with a lifetime total of 25 World Cup downhill wins.
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Famous quotes containing the word races:
“There are only two races on this planet—the intelligent and the stupid.”
—John Fowles (b. 1926)
“Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other’s nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole.... The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)