Read wins second downhill ski race

Press, 9 August 1982, Page 16

Read wins second downhill ski race

Nothing changed for the second race day of the Europa F.I.S. ski-ing series on Saturday. Mount Hutt turned on more brilliant sunshine and Ken Read won another downhill.

Downhill races are notoriously difficult to get off because of the need for extended perfect weather and there have been none at the New Zealand championships since 1978.

After the field was closed for three days in succession last week another cancellation looked possible, but the weather brightened and both international downhills were raced. There have now been six of them at Mount Hutt in the last three years. Read, a 26-year-old Canadian who seems to have made Mount Hutt his second home, had won Friday’s race by a clear margin of 1.755, but he was hard-pressed to win the Tait's downhill on Saturday. Felix Beiczyk, from Castlegar, British Columbia, again grabbed second place after two scorching runs down the 1650 m long course which had a vertical drop of 450 m. This time Beiczyk reduced the gap to 0.73 s and reduced his F.I.S. (Federation Internationale de Ski) seedings points at the same time.

Third'place went to a 20-year-old Japanese, Shinya Chiba, who shut out the rest of the Canadians after performing disappointingly in the first downhill. It was the first time that Read had won two downhills in two

days. In 1980 he won two in a row - in the World Cup. at Kitzbuehel. Austria, and Wengen. Switzerland, and then had a long wait before his next successes, at Mount Hutt.

"I have to be pretty happy with that," said Read. “My skis are running well and I'm really starting to get things working." The Canadians had had to race the dangerous high-speed downhill event only a week after arriving in New Zealand and to make things more difficult those three days were lost. "We kind of jumped into it very quickly without any free ski-ing.” said Read. Read added that it had been a really good race for the up-and-coming Beiczyk. “And to top it all off, my younger brother, Jim, finished today."

After having two near-identi-cal runs on the first race day Read felt his performance was not as consistent this time. “I was really ski-ing some parts well and and really blowing others. In the first run I blew the bottom section and in the second run I blew the top.” The course was again fast, with some sections a little faster than the previous day, and it stood up well to the racing though ice on the pitch section caused some problems. Read averaged 88.82km/h in his fastest run.

For. New Zealand, the outstanding performance came from the 18-y ear-old Queenstown skier, Bruce Grant, who showed commendable aggression in grabbing seventh place and staying within 2s of Read on both runs.

Grant, tenth the day before, skied close to the limit'on a very technical course and overcame near-disaster on the "steep" during the second run when he had to put a hand on the ground to

avoid a crash. "I can't have lost too much speed, though." Finishing sixth on the first run made things tough for Grant, who had been way down in the starting order at No. 19 "It made me more nervous starting sixth, after Ken Read, in the second run." The New Zealand team's coach. Mr David Irwin, a former Canadian World Cup downhill racer, hand-timed the top section of the course and Grant proved one of the fastest through the first two turns, "morning glory" and "aeroplane." Grant said that having Mr Irwin as a coach had really helped his ski-ing. "It is good to have someone who has been a World-class skier. He knows all the tricks."

The race brought Grant about 36 F.I.S. points and that together with his 40 the previous day has considerably improved his international ranking. "That was a fabulous result." said Mr Irwin. "It sure makes my job a lot easier with guys coming through like that." Marcus Hubrich, the national champion, was again the second New Zealand in sixteenth place, four worse than the previous dav. Mark Vryenhoek. placed nineteenth, had quite a good points race, but Mark Fulton, in his startling pink ski suit, was disqualified after missing a gate on the second run. On the previous day he had bent both his other downhill skis when he wiped out the finish in a spectacular crash. Provisional times and results for the Europa F.I.S. Tait's downhill were:-

K. Read (Canada). 1:06.88 first run, 1:07.53. second run, 2:14.41. 1; F. ■ Beiczyk (Canada). 1:07.50. 1:07.64. 2:15.14, 2: S. Chiba (Japan), 1.08.44, 1:08.06. 2:16.50. 3; G. Athans (Canada). 1:08.41. 1:08.98, 2:17.39, 4; C. Kent (Canada), 1:08.13,. 1:09.67. 2:17.80. 5; F. Burton (Britain). 1:08.96, 1:09.13. 2:18.09, 6; B. Grant (N.Z.). 1:08.76. 1:09.38, 2:18.14, 7; T. Saiki (Japan). 1:08.85, 1:09.41, 2:18.26, 8; N. Nakamura (Japan), 1:09.33, 1:09.39. 2:18.72, 9; H. Aihara (Japan), 1:09.05, 1:09.71, 2:18.76, 10; Marcus Hubrich (N.Z.), 1:10.72, 1:11.14, 2:21.86, 16; M. Vryenhoek (N.Z.), 1:11.51, 1:11.04, 2:22.55, 19; Matteus Hubrich (Australia), 1:12.33, 1:12.00, 2:24.33, 23; D. Brown (N.Z.), 1:13.10, 1:12.72, 2:25.86, 26; J. Harcourt (N.Z.), 1:16.67, 1:17.20. 2:33.87, 29. There were 35 starters and 29 finished both runs.