With the World Cup speed season underway, a person can't help but wonder if women who regularly reach speeds of 125 kilometers per hour on their skis lead fast-paced lives in general. As it turns out, there are higher speeds some of them reach by other means.
"I'm sometimes speeding to 240 kilometers per hour in my Audi," said German racer Gina Stechert, who won last season's downhill race in Tarvisio. "In Germany, you can go as fast as you want."
Clearly, speed is addictive, as British all-discipline skier Chemmy Alcott will tell you.
"You get into that stage where you do everything fast," she said. "I drive fast ... I talk fast ... yeah, everything. It's more life pace. I have a really fast life pace. Every time I'm chilled, I don't understand what that is, so I think I'm bored."
However, blistering speed on the hill doesn't translate to a fast life pace for all downhill skiers on the women's World Cup. In fact Lindsey Vonn, the fastest female skier in the world, has a couple of other lightning-paced tendencies, but speed is generally not her daily policy off the race hill.
"I eat very fast," she says. "I come from a family of five, so whoever ate the fastest got the most food. But honestly, besides eating, driving and skiing, I don't do many other things fast. I'm a really slow reader. I'm late to everything. It's just those three things. I just need to get it out of my system, then I can be more relaxed. It's usually skiing that gets it out."
Those of us who will never come close to reaching downhill speed pace on skis can't help wondering what that feels like.
"Drive 90 miles per hour and stick your head out the window," Vonn says. "That's kind of the feeling with the wind rushing in your face."
"When you're skiing, you've got this channel vision. It's another world, really," Alcott says. "When we're hitting like 120, you don't feel that when you're going down. You don't look to the side and notice how fast you're going. You'd be saying, 'Oh my God, the trees ... look at them! They're flashing by.' Because we're looking forward, so it's OK."
And what exactly does that - firing straight down a mountain at 120 to 140 kmph --do for a person?
"It's just fun," says Austrian speed phenom Andrea Fischbacher, who also likes to speed in her car and on her motorcycle. "You're feeling the adrenaline. You feel the speed ... the wind is going through. That's just fun."
Also, for all-discipline skiers, downhill is more than just speed.
"I think downhill is the one where you're most in tune wth the mountain," Alcott says. "You have to feel the terrain. You have to respect the mountain. If you respect the mountain, it lets you go on your limit more, so you push yourself."
And pushing yourself to top all-out speed just carries an appeal all its own, according to Vonn.
"It's like whoever risks the most, whoever is willing to push it to the limit is the one who's usually the fastest," she says. "I love the challenge of pushing myself."
by Shauna Farnell / www.skiracing.com
