Winter Olympics: Alpine skiing hill in Beijing is a new test for all

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None of the Alpine ski racers who’ll be zooming down the mountain at the Beijing Olympics ever has tried the slope that’ll be used with medals at stake. Not yet, anyway.

They might have given it a look — either via footage that made the rounds last year or, in recent days, because the course can be seen from where Winter Games participants are training.

No one, though, is allowed to ski on the actual track that will be used for racing until Thursday, the first of three official training days planned ahead of the men’s downhill, which is scheduled to open the Alpine program on Sunday. This track is new to everyone because Beijing is not a regular stop on the World Cup circuit, the usual pre-Olympics test events were called off because of the coronavirus pandemic and teams agreed to not check it out unless everyone could.

So there are more unanswered questions — and "layers of complexity," in former U.S. Olympian Ted Ligety’s words — for the athletes and their coaches than there usually are. About the pace, for example, or the topography. And that could lead to problems when the competition begins.

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A view from the finish area of the alpine skiing course at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022, in the Yanqing district of Beijing. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

"Nobody really knows what we’re getting into there. But I think that that’s exciting," said River Radamus, who is from Colorado and on his first Olympic team. "The more variables there are, the more people I know are going to take themselves out of the race. When there’s adversity or whatever, sort of accepting that and knowing that