At least 15 years ago, somebody told me about a ski-racing prodigy who could produce unbelievable聽 angulation that allowed him to carve incredibly sharp and precise turns. They weren鈥檛 talking about Bode Miller, Ted Ligety, Lindsey Vonn, or Julia Mancuso. They were talking about Andrew Weibrecht, a skier who grew up shredding the icy slopes of Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid, New York, his hometown.
But until the Vancouver Olympics, where he took bronze in the Super-G, Weibrecht (whose nickname is Warhorse, due to his aggressive racing style), really hadn鈥檛 done much as a ski racer, only scoring one tenth-place finish on the World Cup tour, ski racing鈥檚 elite circuit.
After Vancouver, Weibrecht didn鈥檛 do much either. He suffered through multiple injuries and surgeries, and was only able to scrap together one other tenth place finish on the World Cup tour. That led to him being demoted to the US Ski Team鈥檚 鈥淏 Team,鈥 a tier of the team that鈥檚 not funded. In other words, this year Weibrecht was forced to raise money to pay for his own training and racing.
All that said, his silver medal in the Sochi Super-G wasn鈥檛 just improbable鈥攊t could end up being the most remarkable feat of this Olympic Games. Not only has Weibrecht been injured and underachieved, he admitted to not sleeping well this week and (naturally) not feeling confident entering the race, and started twenty-ninth, when the course was getting slushy toward the bottom, making it slower. Most people (including me) thought the podium had been decided.
But some people just shine in the Olympics (See: Mancuso, Julia), and Weibrecht skied a perfect race to pick up his second Olympic medal. If you鈥檙e keeping count, that鈥檚 the same number of medals that Lindsey Vonn has won.
Not lost in all this, of course, is the fact that Bode Miller tied Canadian Jan Hudec for bronze. We’ve already expressed how we feel about ties in ski racing, but Miller fans are grateful they exist. If ski races were determined by the thousandth of a second, we might be talking about how Miller narrowly missed out on his sixth Olympic medal, a record among American ski racers.
People expect Bode Miller to win gold. But after taking last year off, and, at 36, the oldest ski racer in Sochi, it鈥檚 amazing that Miller is even competing in the Olympics. For Miller to win bronze is nearly as remarkable as Weibrecht winning silver.
There鈥檚 still more races to come. Ted Ligety will be the favorite to win the giant slalom and Mikaela Shiffrin should win the women鈥檚 slalom. But it鈥檚 hard to imagine that those races will match the drama of the men鈥檚 Super-G.