BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — The first ski race I covered was the Olympic women’s downhill in Meribel, France, in 1992, and I watched it from the finish area amid the cheers, the groans and the rubbing shoulders in the close-quarter mixed zone.
So it has continued, but after 23 years of staring uphill as great skiers carved their way down, I had the opportunity on Friday to observe from a different vantage point: to look downhill instead and see a championship race from the start.
“It’s one of the better views in sport,” said Barry Bryant, a 79-year-old American known as Bear who was the assistant start referee for the men’s giant slalom at the 2015 Alpine world ski championships.
The truth is that it can be hard to see the forest or the trees when the fog is thick or the snow or sleet is coming down sideways. But Friday was not one of those days.
Bryant got to enjoy the panorama of the Rocky Mountains on a blue-sky afternoon with Grouse Mountain and Larkspur Bowl stretched out before him and a packed grandstand that looked like a scale model in the distance.
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Unlike his rivals, Hirscher had arrived in the start area just a few minutes before his second run: emerging from splendid isolation by way of the women’s downhill course. Once into the enclosure, he shadow boxed and stretched, heard a course report from the Austrian coaches delivered by two-way radio and then another course report as he clicked into his skis at the entry to the start house.
He lifted them, first the right and then the left, as a ski technician wiped the bottoms with a cloth. He then slid methodically forward, his eyes fixed on the light-filled space in front of him before he finally heard the countdown and the electronic beep and propelled himself into the arena.
Television now shows you so much with Alpine skiing, but it still cannot quite capture the steepness of the pitch or the speed of the racers. Watching Hirscher from this fresh angle, as he leaned hard and sliced past the gates and through the air, he looked computer generated in his wind-tunnel-ready perfection.
But the challenge was very real, and when the last and loudest roar rumbled up to those of us whom Hirscher had left behind, it was the roar of an American celebration.
A version of this article appears in print on February 15, 2015, on page SP3 of the New York edition with the headline: Experiencing the View From the Top. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
