Daron Rahlves
Daron Rahlves | |||||||||||||||||||||
nation | United States | ||||||||||||||||||||
birthday | 12th June 1973 (age 47) | ||||||||||||||||||||
place of birth | Walnut Creek , United States | ||||||||||||||||||||
size | 175 cm | ||||||||||||||||||||
Weight | 84 kg | ||||||||||||||||||||
Career | |||||||||||||||||||||
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discipline | Alpine skiing ( downhill , super-G , giant slalom ) freestyle ( ski cross ) |
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society | Sugar Bowl Ski Team | ||||||||||||||||||||
status | End of career (2006 alpine skiing, 2010 ski cross) | ||||||||||||||||||||
End of career | 2010 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Daron Louis Rahlves (born June 12, 1973 in Walnut Creek , California ) is a retired American skier. At first he was active as an alpine ski racer and after the turn of the millennium was one of the world's best athletes in the downhill and super-G disciplines . He won twelve world cup races and three medals at world championships, including the gold in Super-G in 2001. At the end of the 2005/06 season he announced his temporary resignation. After a one-year break, he switched to freestyle skiing in 2008 and was also among the world's best in the ski cross discipline .
biography
Alpine skiing
Rahlves grew up in Truckee, about 15 kilometers from Lake Tahoe . In his youth he was mainly interested in water skiing . He followed the example of his father Dennis, a real estate trader by profession, who had been successful as a water skier in the 1960s. In 1981 the family moved to nearby Alpine Meadows in order to be able to ski even more often. When he was 14 years old, joined Rahlves to the Green Mountain Valley School in Waitsfield ( Vermont ), a secondary private school with a focus on sports. After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Colorado , and later at the University of Nevada at Reno . In 1993 he became world champion in jet skiing .
So far, Rahlves had practiced alpine skiing more as a compensation, so he did not get beyond 33rd place at the Junior World Championships in Maribor in 1992 . But then he decided to focus entirely on skiing. In the 1993/94 and 1994/95 seasons, he won the Super-G rating of the Nor-Am Cup . From 1994 to 1996 he was the American giant slalom champion three times in a row. His debut in the Ski World Cup he had on 13 March 1994, the departure of Whistler , he reached No. 62. Four days later, he drove the Super-G of Vail at No. 20; However, since it was the World Cup final , there were no World Cup points for it. He won such for the first time on February 26, 1995 as the 23rd of the Super-G from Whistler. Two weeks later, on March 10, 1995, in Kvitfjell he advanced to the top of the world with fourth place in the Super-G.
In the following winters, Rahlves was not able to keep himself at the highest level and only sporadically classified himself among the top ten in the World Cup. At the 1998 Winter Olympics , he reached 7th place in the Super-G. However, he did not seem to want to achieve the big breakthrough. This changed suddenly towards the end of the 1999/2000 season when he won two World Cup runs in a row on March 3 and 4, 2000 in Kvitfjell within 24 hours. Unspectacular results at the beginning of the 2000/01 season seemed to indicate a relapse into mediocrity. But after Rahlves finished third on the Streif in Kitzbühel on January 20, 2001 , he suddenly became one of the most popular favorites for the 2001 World Cup . In St. Anton he became world champion in Super-G, ahead of the Austrians Stephan Eberharter and Hermann Maier ; in the downhill it was enough to place 5.
The 2001/02 season did not go as planned. Among the rather mediocre results, only a fourth place in the Super-G on the Streif stood out. The 2002 Winter Olympics ended with a disappointment for Rahlves (8th place in the Super-G as the best result). He finally had to end the season prematurely after a training crash. Rahlves was far more successful in the 2002/03 season: He was able to win two downhill runs, including the one in Kitzbühel, making him the first American Hahnenkamm downhill winner after Wallace Werner in 1959. With five more podium places, he narrowly missed winning the downhill discipline ranking. But he had to accept another disappointment at the 2003 World Championships , 16th place in the giant slalom was the best result.
Also in the 2003/04 season, Rahlves remained at the top of the world. He won two Super-Gs and two downhill runs, plus three more podium places. In both disciplines he was in second place in the corresponding World Cup ranking at the end of winter. After he had shown comparatively inconspicuous performances in the giant slalom, he achieved the breakthrough to the top of the world in this discipline with several top 10 results in the 2004/05 season. At the 2005 World Championships , he won two more medals: First silver in the downhill run behind his compatriot Bode Miller , four days later the bronze medal in the giant slalom (he had surprisingly led after the first round, but then fell back to third place). He closed the winter with a Super G victory.
At the beginning of the 2005/06 season, Rahlves achieved the only podium in a World Cup giant slalom. He also won three other runs, including the Lauberhorn run in Wengen . But even at the 2006 Winter Olympics , his third participation in the Olympics, he was unable to win a medal because he could not cope with the slope in Sestriere . He finished his alpine skiing career on March 26, 2006 with the eighth American championship title.
Ski cross
Rahlves justified his resignation with the fact that besides training, competition and material tests he had hardly any time for his real passion, freeriding . For this reason, he turned down a job as a sports commentator at CBS , nor did he want to work as a coach. Inspired by the freestyle scene, he appeared in a freeride commercial in 2005, which was soon followed by more. Ultimately, he decided to continue doing top-class sport, but now in the freestyle discipline of ski cross .
Right away, Rahlves was able to establish himself at the top of the world. In the winter of 2007/08 he took part in the 48 Straight Jeep Tour in North America and came in third overall. The in Aspen discharged Winter X-Games in 2008 he decided to ski cross competition in itself. On February 2, 2008, the first use in the Freestyle Skiing World Cup followed , where he advanced to the finals in Deer Valley and ultimately took fourth place. At the 2009 Freestyle World Championships in Inawashiro , he finished 9th. Rahlves achieved his first World Cup podium as a ski crosser on January 5th, 2010 in St. Johann in Tirol . At the 2010 Olympic Winter Games , the last race of his career, Rahlves was eliminated in the quarterfinals and finished in 28th place.
Success as an alpine skier
Olympic games
- Nagano 1998 : 7th Super-G, 20th giant slalom
- Salt Lake City 2002 : 8th Super-G, 16th Downhill
- Turin 2006 : 9th Super-G, 10th Downhill
World championships
- Sierra Nevada 1996 : 22nd Super-G
- Sestriere 1997 : 31st departure
- Vail / Beaver Creek 1999 : 13th Super-G
- St. Anton 2001 : 1st Super-G, 5th Downhill, 19th Giant Slalom
- St. Moritz 2003 : 16th giant slalom, 22nd Super-G
- Bormio 2005 : 2nd downhill, 3rd giant slalom, 10th Super-G
World Cup ratings
season | total | Departure | Super G | Giant slalom | ||||
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space | Points | space | Points | space | Points | space | Points | |
1994/95 | 59. | 82 | - | - | 18th | 82 | - | - |
1995/96 | 58. | 121 | - | - | 18th | 79 | 27. | 42 |
1996/97 | 47. | 160 | - | - | 11. | 160 | - | - |
1997/98 | 57. | 130 | 46. | 17th | 12. | 113 | - | - |
1998/99 | 53. | 114 | 32. | 50 | 19th | 64 | - | - |
1999/00 | 20th | 462 | 10. | 273 | 10. | 183 | 47. | 6th |
2000/01 | 29 | 255 | 15th | 149 | 17th | 70 | 38. | 36 |
2001/02 | 34. | 243 | 19th | 113 | 12. | 118 | 45. | 112 |
2002/03 | 6th | 647 | 2. | 593 | 24. | 45 | 49. | 9 |
2003/04 | 5. | 1004 | 2. | 627 | 2. | 340 | 33. | 37 |
2004/05 | 5. | 984 | 4th | 444 | 3. | 362 | 12. | 178 |
2005/06 | 4th | 903 | 3. | 444 | 3. | 269 | 11. | 190 |
World Cup victories
Rahlves achieved 28 individual races on the podium in the World Cup, including 12 victories:
date | place | country | discipline |
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March 3, 2000 | Kvitfjell | Norway | Departure |
March 4, 2000 | Kvitfjell | Norway | Departure |
December 29, 2002 | Bormio | Italy | Departure |
January 25, 2003 | Kitzbühel | Austria | Departure |
December 5, 2003 | Beaver Creek | United States | Departure |
January 23, 2004 | Kitzbühel | Austria | Super G |
March 7, 2004 | Kvitfjell | Norway | Super G |
March 10, 2004 | Sestriere | Italy | Departure |
March 11, 2005 * | Lenzerheide | Switzerland | Super G |
December 2, 2005 | Beaver Creek | United States | Departure |
December 29, 2005 | Bormio | Italy | Departure |
January 14, 2006 | Wengen | Switzerland | Departure |
* at the same time as Bode Miller
There is also 1 podium place in team competitions .
More Achievements
- 8 US championship titles (Downhill 2001; Super-G 2000, 2004, 2005 and 2006; Giant Slalom 1994, 1995 and 1996)
- Winning the Super-G classification of the Nor-Am Cup in the 1993/94 and 1994/95 seasons
Success as a ski crosser
- Winner of the Winter X Games 2008
- Freestyle World Championships 2009 Inawashiro : 9th ski cross
- 1 podium place in the Skicross World Cup, 3 further placements among the top five
source
- International sports archive , February 2006 edition ( Munzinger archive )
Web links
- Web site Daron Rahlves (English)
- Daron Rahlves in the database of the International Ski Federation (English) Alpine skiing
- Daron Rahlves in the database of the International Ski Federation (English) Skicross
- Daron Rahlves in the database of Ski-DB (English)
- Daron Rahlves in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
- Profile X Games
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Rahlves, Daron |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rahlves, Daron Louis (full name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American skier |
DATE OF BIRTH | June 12, 1973 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Walnut Creek |