Final seconds of course could decide men's downhill championship

Aksel Lund Svindal, who won the downhill on the course at last year's World Cup finals, thinks the race will be decided in the last 40 seconds.

HELMUT FOHRINGER/EPA

SCHLADMING, Austria (AP) -- For about three quarters of the course, the men's downhill at the world championships features long jumps onto bumpy straightaways and sweeping, wide turns.

Then the real action begins.

Skiers take a hard right turn at the Italienerloch curve - named for the Italian racers who struggled at that point in years past - and dive into the course's steepest and most technical section.

The race is Saturday.

"It will probably be decided in those last 40 seconds," said Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal, who won the downhill here at last season's World Cup finals. "That's where the toughest turns are."

The final section of the course is called the Weirather-S, named after Harti Weirather, the Austrian skier who won the race when the worlds were first held here in 1982. That's also the part of the course used for the annual night slalom, and the gradient is better suited for a technical race than a downhill, meaning skiers will have to dig their edges in hard to stay on their line just as their legs begin to weaken in the 2 minute-plus run.

Austria's top challenger this time is Klaus Kroell, the red-bearded racer who won last season's World Cup downhill title. There's also Hannes Reichelt, the only Austrian to win a downhill this season and who finished fourth in the super-G that opened the championships.

The Austrians have been training on the Planai course all season but the rest of the field had only one full training run, which Reichelt led on Thursday ahead of Italians Dominik Paris and Christof Innerhofer, who each have two wins this season.

In Friday's second training session, racers did not ski the final 25 seconds because it was being prepared for the women's super-combined.

Instead, there will be a shortened training run on the bottom early Saturday before the race a few hours later.

France's Brice Roger, who has a career-best finish of 10th, led the shortened session ahead of Andrej Sporn of Slovenia and Marco Sullivan of the United States.

The course hardened after the temperature fell overnight.

Light snow is forecast for Saturday.

"The steepest and most technical part of the course is the last four turns, so it's nice to be fast on the top today but I definitely have to keep in mind that that's not the whole deal," said Sullivan, who is self-funded this season after several difficult years affected by injury.

Sullivan finished third in Lake Louise, Alberta, at the start of this season for his first podium finish in four years.

The defending champion is Erik Guay of Canada, who showed he's back in form with a runner-up finish behind Paris in Kitzbuehel, Austria, two weeks ago.

However, Guay struggled to a 23rd-place finish in the super-G a few days ago.

"I'm a little wishy-washy," Guay said. "The confidence isn't there 100 percent. ... (Training) helps to put me in that frame of mind but I'm not here to finish fourth, I'm here to be on the podium and hopefully win this thing, so I have a lot of work to do for Saturday."

With John Kucera having won in Val d'Isere, France, in 2009, the Canadian team is aiming for its third consecutive world title in skiing's glamour event.

Some 50,000 fans are expected in this small Alpine village for the race.

"It's awesome, it's a cool scene," Sullivan said. "The Austrians obviously love skiing but they're not the only ones here. You see tons of Swiss flags and there are Americans. It's just a big melting pot of ski racing fans and Schladming has done a great job of building up the stadium right in the finish where it feels like we're skiing into the Thunder Dome - fans are going crazy. If I can throw down a good run and be the focus of the crowd it will be awesome."