Alpine skiing has this season seen a raft of skiers injured in crashes and the spotlight on racing's risk management will never be more in focus than in this weekend's World Cup downhill in Kitzbühel.
The 3.3 km-long Streif course in the Austrian resort is widely regarded as the toughest and most demanding on the circuit.
It has also been witness to some horrific crashes, sliding bodies, flying skis and helicopter evacuations, highlighting the dangers of top-level ski racing.
Defending champion Cyprien Sarrazin is one notable absentee from three days of racing, the Frenchman in rehabilitation after a harrowing crash during a training run in Italy last month.
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His season was ended immediately as he underwent surgery to treat internal bleeding in his head.
Two other skiers had serious accidents on the same piste in Bormio, which will host the men's alpine events at next year's Winter Olympics.
The Streif course will feature 17 kilometres of safety netting, 180 impact protection mats, and 160 air fences. A super-G and downhill are scheduled for Friday and Saturday.
"In the downhill race, it's a question of balance between respect for the course and confidence in your own abilities," says Dr Patrick Bernatzky, a sports psychologist at the University of Salzburg who has been providing mental coaching to the Austrian team since 2006.
"Every athlete has doubts. If they didn't have doubts, they wouldn't get better."
All about survival
Therein lies the dilemma for the rare handful of ski racers who have the physical ability, technique and downright bravado to pitch themselves down the snaking course with seemingly scant regard for their own safety.
"Risk management" comes into play: how much a racer is able to push himself, like a Formula One driver, knowing that one slight error might send him hurtling into the net.
"You choose your line and then it's all about survival," says retired Norwegian racer Aksel Lund Svindal, a three-time super-G winner in Kitzbühel.
"Once you've made that decision, you can no longer change your mind."
Italy's Dominik Paris, a three-time downhill winner on the Streif, added that overreaching was not on the cards.
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"It's a hell of a ride... respect will keep you safe," he says in the Red Bull film based on his Kitzbühel race in 2024 called "Metal on the Streif". "If you have fear, maybe it's time to stop."
Racers are vying for € 100,000 ($108,000) in prize money, part of a one million-euro pot offered for three days of racing in the upmarket Austrian resort.
It is a guaranteed thigh-trembling descent down the Hahnenkamm (rooster's comb) mountain in the beautiful Tirol valley, which made its debut in 1931.
It sees the skiers reach motorway-coasting speeds of 140km/h while negotiating sections that have an 85-percent gradient and 80-metre jumps, all the while battling crippling centrifugal forces.
The icy course, which has a stomach-churning vertiginous start that propels racers to 100km/h in five seconds, features falls, snakes and rolls through a wide variety of terrain.
The Holy Grail
"You can be a world champ, Olympic gold medallist. This is nice, but if you win in Kitzbühel, you're a real champ," says Liechtenstein's one-time winner Marco Buechel.
"It's like Wimbledon for tennis, Monaco for Formula One, it's the highest peak. It's the most difficult downhill in the world. It's dangerous, icy, steep, bumpy; it's an extreme sport, the crowd goes crazy; Kitzbühel is the Holy Grail.
"You've got to have a lot of courage."
Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, the Norwegian-born racer now competing for Brazil thanks to his mother, called Kitzbühel the "Superbowl of skiing".
There is no doubt that there is a voyeuristic, gladiatorial draw for the estimated 90,000-strong crowd who flock in for the Kitzbühel weekend, a heady mix between champagne-drinking glitterati and young locals revelling in an alcohol-fuelled rite of passage.
Man and material are tested to the max as racers fight not only creeping exhaustion but also a 3.5G centrifugal force to change direction into the final descent.
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A raised pole in recognition of a felled skier untangling himself from the nets and gingerly refinding his feet is greeted by applause followed by roars for the next competitor's breath-taking descent in what becomes a slightly queasy insight into the appeal of the ultimate alpine skiing test: its inherent danger.
"It's such good energy, it's the whole package," said Pinheiro Braathen.
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