Blizzard wipes out downhill

The U.S. Ski Team is back in Southcentral Alaska for the second time this year to crown its national championships -- and for the second time this year, Alaska is throwing too much winter at the skiers.

The race series getting hammered by weather this time around is U.S. alpine championships at Alyeska Ski Resort in Girdwood.

A blizzard dumped 12 inches of snow on the mountain in a 24-hour period Tuesday and Wednesday, and snow was still coming down hard Wednesday afternoon, prompting officials to cancel today's FIS downhill race and cross their fingers in the hope Friday's national championship downhill can be held as scheduled.

"We could get another 12 to 18 inches," Alyeska spokesman Jason Lott said.

"We're not going to have anything (today). We may have training and possible (race) runs on Friday if things lighten up and we can get out and reset the course."

In January, the U.S. nordic championships came to Kincaid Park, where two of the four races couldn't be held because sub-zero temperatures dipped to below legal racing limits. Those two races were rescheduled as part of this week's national distance nordic championships in Fairbanks, where things so far are going as scheduled.

Alyeska is open to skiing -- there's certainly plenty of snow, and members of the U.S. national team were on out on the slopes Wednesday free-skiing along with the general public, Lott said. But they can't race, because the blizzard took out the race course. Things need to calm down in order to set a new one, Lott said.

"If it keeps snowing and blowing, we could potentially look at pushing the races back to Saturday," he said.

The FIS downhill won't be rescheduled. It's an important race to many skiers, because it can help a skier improve his or her national and international point-standings, but no national titles would have been at stake in it.

The second of the two scheduled downhill races is a national championship race, so officials will try hard to get it rescheduled.

Staging a downhill is trickier than any other race, because race rules require that, for safety's sake, skiers take at least one training run down the mountain. That often means you need two days for a downhill race -- one for training, one for racing.

The downhill is scheduled to be followed by the super-G on Saturday, the slalom on Sunday, the women's giant slalom on Monday and the men's giant slalom on Tuesday. Because the giant slalom was spread over two days, that gives race organizers some wiggle room, Lott said.

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.