Downhill Racer <\/em>opens in the international ski season of 1966, on the legendary downhill course at the Lauberhorn races in Wengen, Switzerland. There, American skier Tommy Erb suffers a bone-shattering crash, a disaster presaged by the film\u2019s foreboding (and distractingly dated) score by Kenyon Hopkins. Erb is played by ex-U.S. Ski Team member Joe Jay Jalbert, who also served as the film\u2019s technical advisor, Redford\u2019s ski double, and cameraman\u2014risking his own life and limbs careening downhill at 80 mph carrying a 40-pound camera in order to capture the film\u2019s exhilarating skiing footage (including plenty of P.O.V. shots). By opening with, and lingering on Erb\u2019s terrible accident (including a weird blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it shot of an open wound), Ritchie is implying his skeptical cost-analysis of modern competitive sport from the start. That the balance sheet is \u201cin the red\u201d is made more explicit in a second crash later in the film that mirrors this first one: another season-ending, bloody blow-out of American skier Johnny Creech (Jim McMullan) who, laid up in a hospital bed, scoffs at his sports\u2019 relentless demands: \u201csacrifice without end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But back to the season of \u201966. Chappellet is summoned to Switzerland to replace the injured (and expendable) Erb on the U.S. Ski Team. Arriving, he is clearly out of his depth, new to international travel and competition, dumbfounded by foreign tongues. But he\u2019s cocky nonetheless, and uninterested in making nice with his new teammates, his coach Eugene Claire (a rising Gene Hackman, two years before The French Connection<\/em>), or the foreign media. In Switzerland, he refuses to race when he is given a late starting position (bib 88), complaining \u201cI\u2019ll be up to my knees in ruts.\u201d But at the next race, in Austria, he agrees to race at number 79th<\/sup>. There, he surprises everyone by coming in 4th, hurtling himself down the mountain with wild abandon, in stark contrast to the skillful finesse of his teammate-cum-rival Creech, who he displaces. At the season\u2019s final race, the Kitzb\u00fchel World Championships, Chappellet turns in the field\u2019s fastest time at the split but crashes spectacularly before the finish line. When he blames the snow conditions and his start position, Coach Claire puts him straight: \u201cNo. You just weren\u2019t good enough, that\u2019s all. You lost your strength.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus chided, Chappallet petulantly commits to a summer of strength training, administered by Assistant Coach Mayo (a barely recognizable Dabney Coleman, eleven years prior to 9 to 5<\/em>). But instead of a Rocky<\/em>-esque montage of muscle and grit-building, Ritchie breezes through the training (a few laps around a track in country-club whites) to give us, instead, a fundraising montage, suggesting that money is the real engine of Olympic sport. In it, Coach Claire appeals to investors\u2019 financial interests \u2013 \u201cEvery racer on a well-equipped winning team is a foreign sales representative for U.S. ski products\u201d \u2013 and to their nationalism, in the triumphalist Cold War tones that Ritchie and his contemporary New Hollywood filmmakers found fatuous. \u201cThese fine young competitors are roving ambassadors for the American Way of Life,\u201d we are told, and they are proof, finally, that \u201cthe richest nation in the world\u201d can produce a downhill champion. (In real life, the U.S. did not achieve that feat until 1984, when Bill Johnson won Olympic gold in Sarajevo.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here it is worth pausing to appreciate Downhill Racer <\/em>as an historical document and, as such, a barometer of alpine skiing\u2019s evolution\u2014or devolution, if we take Ritchie\u2019s point. Cutting edge at the time, the equipment seems primitive: the helmets are adorned with leather ear flaps, the skis are treacherously thin planks of uniform width, the poles straight, and the gates bamboo. Hand-timing predominates, and safety nets are nowhere to be seen. Relatedly, the level of competition seems quaint by comparison to today\u2019s standards. The notion of a thirty-something breaking onto the U.S. Ski Team out of obscurity, and undergoing light off-season training for the first time, is laughable in a world in which alpine skiers are pipe-lined for stardom in their teens<\/a>, train tirelessly to peak athletic condition year-round, and retire <\/em>in their thirties. So is the notion of athletes waxing their own (lone) pair of skis on race day, in a world in which athletes travel with an entourage of equipment managers and upwards of sixty pairs of skis. So is the notion of a \u2018just try out these skis\u2019 endorsement deal Chappellet strikes with a European manufacturer, in a world in which an Olympic skier can make millions<\/a> endorsing brands like Adidas, Visa, and Land Rover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But, again, back to \u201966. After summer training in Oregon, Chappellet pays a visit to his hometown in Colorado, in a sequence that can be understood as an antidote to network television\u2019s coverage of Olympian backstories to this day, predictably filled with the undying support of family members and loved ones, and the implicit moral that every sacrifice is worth it. In Idaho Springs, Chappellet\u2019s father (Walter Stroud) maintains a dilapidated ranch and his cold-hearted disdain for his son\u2019s chosen pursuit. (Without explanation, Mother Chappellet is conspicuously absent.) It is clear that Dave has inherited the chip on his shoulder, and related self-isolating inexpressiveness, from Chappellet Senior, which Dave unleashes on his estranged hometown sweetheart, rejecting her emotional needs after she has satisfied his physical ones. In this hometown sequence\u2019s final moment, father and son deign to have a conversation. in which Mr. Chappellet dispassionately disparages amateur sport, not least of all because it pays nothing: \u201cI hope you don\u2019t end up asking yourself the question some folks ask me: \u2018What\u2019s he do it for?\u201d Dave fumbles in response, \u201cWell, I\u2019ll be famous. I\u2019ll be champion.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n His dad\u2019s retort is devastating: \u201cWorld\u2019s full of \u2018em.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n After this summer interlude, Downhill Racer<\/em>\u2019s second act is driven by a romance that buds over the ski season of \u201867. It is here that Ritchie most entertains the appeal and rewards of being a world champion. And, despite the impression of heavy-handed excoriation I\u2019ve given above, Ritchie does allow for a degree of ambiguity, not least of all by casting the era\u2019s most godlike human man in the role of Olympian-protagonist, and the cinematography that captures the visceral thrill of his sport. In the season of \u201967, Chappellet\u2019s rising star wins him a glamorous and gorgeous Swedish girlfriend Carole Stahl (Camilla Sparv), who drives a racy goldenrod Porsche. The couple are glorious in figure-hugging 1960s alpine fashion, Redford in stark white turtlenecks and Sparv in fur-lined overcoats. As if lifting it straight out of a contemporaneous Warren Miller ski film, Ritchie inserts a sun-spotted ski sequence in their hot and heavy courtship, the two of them carving perfect S-turns in virgin snow. Chappellet\u2019s racing also wins him public adoration, with crowds and the media swarming. Cockier than ever after the \u201967 season, Chappellet fails to keep up with Carole in the off-season and is surprised to find she has moved on when he returns to Europe for the \u201968 season and an Olympic year, with the games held in Grenoble, France, the setting of the film\u2019s final act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I will not spoil the ending, except to say that it is the best part of the film, offering a well-earned (anti)climactic, anti-triumphalist moment that clinches a <\/em>top seed for Downhill Racer <\/em>in the canon of sports films. And except to say, sorry Ritchie, we never learn: Winning still wins.\u00a0 “Downhill Racer” is now streaming on the Criterion Channel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/downhill2-1024x500.jpg\")
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