Lauberhorn ski races

The Lauberhorn ski races (Lauberhorn World Cup alpine ski races () (downhill, slalom, and combined) are among the highest-attended winter sports events in the world, attracting around 30,000 spectators each year. An established attraction is the airshow by the Patrouille Suisse, the aerobatic demonstration team of the Swiss Air Force. The 2016 races were held 15–17 January (super-combined, downhill, and slalom).
The races in Wengen in the Bernese Oberland are held in mid-January, usually the week prior to the Hahnenkamm, in Kitzbühel, Austria, another classic downhill race run since the early 1930s.
The Lauberhorn is a mountain in the Bernese Alps of Switzerland, located between Wengen and Grindelwald, north of the Kleine Scheidegg. Its summit is at an elevation of above sea level.
The downhill course is the longest in the world; its length of over results in run times of two and a half minutes (about 30–45 seconds longer than standard downhill races); top speeds approach on its "Haneggschuss", the highest speeds on the World Cup circuit.
The Lauberhorn downhill run is surrounded by the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau above the Lauterbrunnen valley. It is known for run arrangements such as the "Hundschopf," a signature jump over a rock nose, the "Kernen-S" (passing over a bridge at around and the "Wasserstation" tunnel (underpassing the viaduct of the Wengernalpbahn).
Key sections.
Many of the named portions of the course are due to historic falls or crashes by racers. The best known sections of the Lauberhorn downhill, or "Lauberhornrennen", race are the following (in descending order):
History.
One of the first reports of skiing from the Lauberhorn to Wengen was in 1912 when the Roberts of Candahar Ski Challenge Cup was offered. By 1927 it was just known as the Lauberhorn Ski Cup.
It is one of the oldest continuously-held ski races. The "Russisprung" was originally built in the spring for a television show and was incorporated into the course by organizers the following year. The "Minsch-Kante" is where Josef Minsch fell in 1965 and was hospitalized for weeks. The "Canadian Corner" is named after two of the Crazy Canucks, Dave Irwin and Ken Read, who aggressively attacked this part of the course in 1976 and subsequently fell during the race. The "Kernen-S" was renamed for 2003 winner Bruno Kernen after his crash in 2006 at the former "Brüggli-S." The "Silberhornsprung" was introduced in 2003 with the pyramid-shaped Silberhorn mountain in the background for television viewers. The "Österreicherloch" (Austrian hole) got its name in 1954 when almost all participating Austrian skiers (including Toni Sailer) fell there; 1960s Austrian great Karl Schranz later fell there as well.
In 1991, a tragic death occurred during training for the race at the "Ziel-S" (Finish-S). The young Austrian skier Gernot Reinstadler was not able to finish the S-curve properly and therefore jumped into the slope boundary (because he was too far to the right), where he hooked one ski in the security net and suffered severe injuries to the lower body. He died shortly after the accident from internal bleeding. The race was not held that year. In reaction to this tragic event, the slope boundary at that place was also equipped with rejection canvas and the gates were moved upwards and more to the left.
Snowmaking was added in the mid-1990s, and the combined race has been a run as a "super combined" since the World Cup debut of the format at Wengen in 2005. The "super-combi" consists of a shortened downhill and with a slalom run, both on the same day, instead of three runs (one downhill and two slalom) of the traditional combined. On the World Cup circuit, the traditional combined is usually not run as separate races, but determined "on paper" from the results of the primary downhill and slalom races, which are run on separate days. (The Olympics and world championships are the exceptions, holding separate races for the combined.) At the Winter Olympics, the super-combined format replaced the traditional combined at the 2010 Winter Games.