MovieChat Forums > Downhill Racer (1969) Discussion > Did he cause Creech's accident?

Did he cause Creech's accident?

posted 14 years ago by artistathome
2 replies | jump to latest

Did Chappelet indirectly cause the accident by suggesting they race? I think so. I think he knew he would never win unless Creech was outa the way.

he suggested the race hoping something would happen to one or the other of them. Creech so Chappelet could go off in Creech's place or himself so he could save face and not have to race so late.

they just weren't going to let him go off early so by the time he raced the course was no good. I don't think anyone liked him at all.

Chappelet knew that Creech would go all out to beat him. If he hung back and didn't do anything stupid maybe Creech would sprain an ankle or a wrist, etc.

And of course he did get to race and holy mackeral he won the gold.

I am surprised this has not been discussed here, since it is so obvious.

[–] johnston.scot 13 years ago

Huh?

Chappellet had nothing to do with the accident in which Creech got hurt.

There was an earlier bit where they screwed around during training (at Wengen) and raced side by side until Creech crashed. Creech's season-ending crash was later, during an actual race.

Chappellet wouldn't have improved his start order by eliminating Creech, in any event. Seeding isn't done country-by-country. It's done on the basis of past results (FIS points, specifically). In the time period of the movie, the racers were split into groups of 15: the 15 racers with the best prior results went first (in random order within the 15), then the 16th-30th, etc.* Nowadays, the exact ordering method is slightly different, but it remains the case that eliminating a racer from your country doesn't mean that you get to take over his spot. Nor does it matter how much anyone likes you.

In any event, but the time of the Olympics, Chappellet had worked his way up in the start order, based on his prior results.

The point of their head-to-head race wasn't that Chappellet was being slyly devious. He was being reckless and foolishly competitive, and infected Creech, who was the more strategic guy, with some of his foolishness.
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*With one exception: if fresh-snow conditions made it disadvanteous to be one of the first few racers, they would sometimes insert several lower-ranked racers at the beginning as a "snow seed."

[–] ChitoRaffferty 12 years ago

Hackman took the bad news hard: was projecting.

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