The outstanding downhill skier in the Alpine Ski World Cup is called Bryce Bennett. The American is more than two meters tall and easily towers over his fellow competitors by fifteen or twenty centimeters. No advantage in a sport that requires more compact power packs.
“It’s hard,” says the slim Bennett himself, who barely weighs a hundred kilos, about his length disadvantage. “The equipment is also more geared towards average guys. For me, everything is out of the ordinary.” Because of his long legs, Bennett’s skiing style always seems a bit staggering, which is why many of his companions in earlier years were surprised that he wanted to become a professional skier. He became one anyway.
And Bryce Bennett has prevailed – albeit after long years of apprenticeship. Before the race weekend in Wengen, the 31-year-old is currently in second place in the downhill ranking of the Alpine Ski World Cup. He won the season opener in Val Gardena with starting number 34 – after the supposed winning photos with stars Alexander Aamodt Kilde and Marco Odermatt had already been taken. Two days later he confirmed his coup with a third place on the same slope. And he is also approaching the Lauberhorn races with confidence, after all, against the backdrop of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, he has raced into the top eight three times in recent years.
Svindal and Walchofer as role models
Bryce Bennett comes from Palisades Tahoe, California, a winter sports resort in the “Olympic Valley” on picturesque Lake Tahoe. He was an enthusiastic skier from an early age. “Skiing isn’t really a part of American sports culture. But I watched ski races every week. It was a dream for me to be one of the guys.”
His role models were tall and tall downhill skiers like Aksel Lund Svindal and Michael Walchhofer. And he also modeled himself on his compatriots Bode Miller and Ted Ligety as well as Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin – because they were tough enough to develop their own style and be successful with it.
The American dream of being able to do it if you believe hard enough means that American alpine skiers have to develop it themselves. There is no master plan like in Austria or Switzerland. “The United States is big and we come from many areas of the country. The technology is individual to each of us. In European countries there is more control over the learning content,” says Bennett. For him, the freedom to create his own skiing technique was the inevitable path: “You learn by trying.”
After nine years in the World Cup, his impression that he is really there has solidified. “It took time to believe: you are one of these guys. You can be on the podium.” For Bennett, his personal American dream had come true – even if he came to the realization that he had chosen the hardest discipline of all.
“In other sports, you start the game slowly,” is Bennett’s observation: “And you have the opportunity to get closer. When ski racing you have to be in the flow straight away. From the moment you start the race. That’s what makes it so difficult. That’s the challenge.” He doesn’t always succeed, as his 48th place in Bormio showed.
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In order to master the challenge of the Ski World Cup, the Americans are also taking a long journey. “We are on the road 160 days a year – and that doesn’t include the summer training camp in Argentina.” He also spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve with the US ski team. He still found his private happiness – in the summer of 2022, Bennett married his long-time girlfriend Kelley Altick – at home at Lake Tahoe: “She’s great – and she knew what life she was getting into.”
