BORMIO, Italy, Feb 9 : Two storied French Alpine skiing families were on display in Bormio on Monday when the sons of skiing champions Sébastien Amiez and Luc Alphand lined up on the same team in the Olympic debut of the team combined event.
Nils Alphand, 29, whose father Luc Alphand won the overall World Cup in 1997, three consecutive downhill Crystal Globes and one super-G World Cup, raced the downhill leg of the event, which features same-gender teams comprised of a speed specialist and a slalom expert.
Steven Amiez, 27, the son of 2002 silver Olympic medallist Sébastien Amiez, took part in the slalom leg of the combined event, which ranked teams according to the sum of their times in each race.
The French pair finished 16th after Alphand, who had injured his wrist in downhill training, placed 17th in the downhill and Amiez clocked the ninth-fastest slalom run, leaving the duo 2.62 seconds off Swiss winners Franjo von Allmen and Tanguy Nef.
WEIGHT OF FATHERS’ REPUTATIONS
Amiez, who said before the race he had watched on YouTube his father’s performance so many times that he almost has memories of it, acknowledged the weight of their fathers’ reputations.
“When we were younger it could bother us when people kept calling us ‘the son of …’. But now that we’ve grown up, it doesn’t bother us. It’s more a point of pride,” said Steven Amiez. “Now it’s not about following their tracks but creating our own.”
Nils Alphand echoed the sense of a generational shift in Alpine skiing: “We are serious about the sport, but we maybe sometimes relax a bit more,” he said, contrasting his cohort with the more rigid environment of previous decades.
Steven Amiez’s father Sébastien Amiez told Reuters he and his son remained closely connected but that his role was limited once the racing started.
“We talk a lot, especially about technique, how to ski, about equipment choices, and he trusts me a lot on those things,” he said. “But at the end of the day, he’s the one who pushes out of the start gate, and he’s the one who has to write his own story.”
