CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The crowds have disappeared and so has the sun, dipping behind the frigid Dolomites as another day of Olympic racing is in the books.
This is the golden hour for the hidden heroes of the sport. You can find them in metal storage containers and dimly-lit concrete garages, warmed by space heaters and hunkered over skis that will carry their clients down harrowing hills, places where 80 mph is routine and a seemingly miniscule mistake can spell disaster.
They scrape. They wax. They file. They meticulously pore over every detail, these ski technicians — commonly referred to as ski techs — whose work is graded in milliseconds.
“There’s no person in an athlete’s quiver more important than the tech,” said Stacey Cook, a retired American World Cup Alpine ski racer who competed for 15 years as a member of the U.S. Ski Team.
“They work insanely long hours, but they are the athlete’s greatest tool.”
In the same way a skilled mechanic can get every bit of horsepower out of Formula One car, a proper tuning can make all the difference in a ski race decided by hundredths of a second.
“It can easily mean the difference between a podium and not even being in the top 20,” Cook said. “When a racer doesn’t feel comfortable to be on the edge of disaster, they are no longer in contention.”
Carbon fiber, polymer, titanium… sure, that’s part of it, but the responsibilities of a ski tech go far beyond that. It’s a dark art. They know their racers better than the racers know themselves, analyzing every turn, riding the chairlift with them for every practice run, monitoring not just what’s going on inside the boots but inside the helmet.
“Half the job is tuning skis, and the other half is being a psychologist,” said Leo Mussi, a legendary ski tech whose current Olympic clients include American speed specialists Bryce Bennett and Sam Morse.
“Just tuning skis and saying, ‘My job is done,’ that’s not going to work. You’re with them 24/7. You suffer with them, and you enjoy it with them.”
Mussi, 59, who was raised in the Italian Alps and still lives there, was a ski racer as a kid but after a stint in the Italian army took to tuning skis for the national team. What began as a one-year gig turned into a career that has spanned four decades.
“I was with him for 18 years, and I call him my Euro Dad,” said retired American racer Steve Nyman, a three-time Olympian with three World Cup downhill wins at Val Gardena in the South Tyrolean Dolomites of Northern Italy. “He’s with me every run I take. All summer long in South America, in the fall, in Colorado, throughout the winter all over Europe.”
Val Gardena is home to the famous Saslong slope, a renowned World Cup downhill course, one that features nine jumps and 17 large bumps. It’s not the men’s downhill course for these Olympics, but the snow conditions are similar.
“There’s a lot of conviction that’s required,” Nyman said. “If you’re going over those jumps with hesitation, you’re hosed.”
Mussi’s skiers have won nine times on the course, earning him the nickname “King of the Saslong” and helping cement his reputation as one of the best ski techs in the business.
“There are two or three points on that course where you must carry speed, that’s the whole secret,” Mussi said. “I don’t just prepare skis; I teach them how to read the hill.”
Not every racer has his or her personal technician, but the elite ones do. Those experts are often supplied by a country’s ski federation or by individual equipment manufacturers sponsoring the athlete in question.
When American Breezy Johnson won gold in the women’s downhill Sunday, her technician, Ales Sopotnik, was nearby pulling for her — but avoided watching the large videoboard at the bottom of the run.
“Actually, I didn’t watch it,” Sopotnik said. “I was on my knees with her the whole course, praying with her, how she’s skiing and this. That for me is more connection with her than me watching. So for me, it was like I was there in person with her when she came in.”
Typical discussions with the racers might concern the binding setup, the boot ramp angle, the feel of the edges, and how the ski feels on different types of snow. The tech is in constant communication with the racer but has final say on which pair of skis will be used for a given race.
It’s not uncommon for a skier to have as many as 40 pairs of skis shipped from course to course. The tech is responsible for getting them there, and having them ready to go.
“But it’s not a service relationship, it’s a partnership,” said Cook, noting it’s an unwritten rule that a racer never openly criticizes a technician, just the way it’s bad form for a quarterback to rip his offensive line.
That’s not to say the athletes and technicians don’t stubbornly butt heads from time to time.
“Sometimes with Steve, I had to slow him down,” Mussi said. “He had too many ideas.”
But he was quick to add: “You have to really get along with the athlete. If you don’t match as a person with them, I don’t think we can have success.”
This much we know: If Bennett or Morse wind up on the Olympic medal stand, Mussi won’t be there to see it.
“I’ve never gone to a medal ceremony, and I never will,” Mussi said. “That’s their moment, not mine.”
He’ll be working. Too little time, too many skis, and another race right around the corner.
The post Ski techs: The quiet heroes behind Olympic gold-medal performances appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
