Zürcher Nachrichten - Kitzbuehel's Hahnenkamm, the terrifying Super Bowl of skiing

Caillot, starting with a lowly bib number 59, hurtled out of the start gate in Wednesday's training run for World Cup races, but a mistake saw him come a cropper high up the 3.3km-long (two-mile) Streif course, widely considered the toughest on the circuit.

"I haven't broken anything," he said on social media, after being evacuated by helicopter.

"I got off incredibly lightly, just a big bruise on my back. I have a little star watching over me," he added, praising the manufacturers of his airbag and helmet.

Last year, Caillot's teammate Alexis Pinturault crashed in Kitzbuehel, while French downhiller Cyprien Sarrazin and a couple of other racers suffered season-ending accidents in Bormio, where the men's alpine skiing events for the Winter Olympics will be held next month.

Giovanni Franzoni has topped the two training runs in Kitzbuehel, the Italian having dedicated his maiden World Cup win in Wengen last weekend to former teammate Matteo Franzoso, who died in a training crash in Chile in September.

- Thigh trembler -

Racers are vying for prize money of 101,000 euros ($118,000), part of a 1m-euro pot on offer for three days of racing in the upmarket Austrian resort.

It is a guaranteed thigh-trembling descent down the Hahnenkamm, or rooster's comb, mountain in the beautiful Tirol valley, in an event which made its debut in 1931.

Skiers reach motorway-coasting speeds of 140km/h (87mph) while negotiating sections that have an 85-percent gradient and 80-metre (262-feet) jumps, all while battling crippling centrifugal forces.

The icy course, which has a stomach-churning vertiginous start that propels racers to 100km/h in five seconds, snakes and rolls through a wide variety of terrain.

Austrian-Dutch racer Marcel Hirscher, in a column for the Red Bulletin magazine, called the Kitzbuehel weekend "the Hollywood of snow, the Super Bowl of ski racing".

"Kitzbuehel was, is and will remain the benchmark," said the eight-time World Cup overall winner. "Simply being a good skier isn't good enough.

"Do Olympic gold, world championship titles and overall World Cup victories complete a ski biography? Winning in Kitzbuehel is part of it, in my opinion."

Caillot's crash emphasises the dangers of ski racing, although there have been safety improvements in recent years.

- Risk management -

Super-G and downhill races are scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

Kitzbuehel's Streif course will feature 17 kilometres of safety netting, 180 impact protection mats and 160 air fences.

The downhill course record of 1min 51.58sec was set by Austria's Fritz Strobl back in 1997.

But it is safe to say that racers are more concerned about safely negotiating the piste with the right amount of so-called "risk management": how much a racer is able to push himself, much like a Formula One driver, in the knowledge that one small error could mean cart-wheeling into the netting.

"We're skiing down the mountain on two planks. Everybody takes a risk, and knows it," said Austrian Vincent Kriechmayr.

"If I don't have 100% confidence in my abilities I can't go to the limit, it's part of the game that's tough, fast and dangerous."

Hundreds of thousands of people file into Kitzbuehel every year for the resort's self-proclaimed "white circus" that sees a heady mix of champagne-drinking glitterati and young locals revelling in an alcohol-fuelled rite of passage.

For the masses of fans lining the Streif, watching the racing is an unashamedly voyeuristic spectacle.

While the gladiatorial baying is replaced by a meek silence in the event of a crash, there is raucous applause should the crash victim get to his feet and flags, flares and airhorns sound once more.

"We think we're superheroes and people believe we're indestructible, but we're just like everyone else, only a bit crazy," said Norwegian racer Aleksander Aamondt Kilde.

Italian Dominik Paris, a three-time downhill winner in Kitzbuehel, said "respect will keep you safe".

"If you have fear, maybe it's time to stop."

A.Wyss--NZN