[August]

Anybody here interested in alpine skiining?

Men's season started today and women's season yesterday in Austria's Sölden. Weather conditions were terrible today, still great they were able to race. Ligety was very impressive, win by 2.75 sec. I wasn't able to watch the 1st run, but obviously first starters had difficult conditions and he did much better than other early staters on the 1st run. And 2nd run was just so impressive.

Also nice to see Mölgg on podium, and Hirscher's 2nd run and 3rd place finish showed he is dangerous also this season. And nice to see Defago finishing 5th, seems to be his career's 2nd best GS finish in World Cup, hopefully he'll have a good winter.

[Kat_YYZ]

I watch it sometimes.
Will miss Cuche, though

[August]

Originally Posted by Kat_YYZ

Will miss Cuche, though

Me too.

Anyway, yesterday there was finally the first downhill of the season, downhill is so much more exciting to watch than e.g. slaloms. Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal took an impressive win yesterday by 0.64 secs before Austria's Max Franz who took his first podium in the World Cup circuit. 3rd place was tied between last year's World Cup downhill winner Austrian Klaus Kröll and USA's Marco Sullivan whose last podium was almost four years ago.

I'm happy for Svindal's win. He's one of my favourites. Most skiers do well in only one or two competition formats, he does well in four; downhill, super-g, giant slalom, and combined.

[Litotes]

Originally Posted by August

Me too.

Anyway, yesterday there was finally the first downhill of the season, downhill is so much more exciting to watch than e.g. slaloms. Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal took an impressive win yesterday by 0.64 secs before Austria's Max Franz who took his first podium in the World Cup circuit. 3rd place was tied between last year's World Cup downhill winner Austrian Klaus Kröll and USA's Marco Sullivan whose last podium was almost four years ago.

I'm happy for Svindal's win. He's one of my favourites. Most skiers do well in only one or two competition formats, he does well in four; downhill, super-g, giant slalom, and combined.

That's somewhat of a Norwegian specialty. Aamodt and Kjus even did all five. It cost them in total World Cup wins, generally beaten by event specialists, but paid off handsomely in World Championship and Olympic Games medals.

[Mateya]

I'm a bit interested and extremely proud of Tina Maze, my compatriot.

What she's doing this year is a fairy tale. Not only leading the rankings, she also made a music video and some say she has better voice than some of our singers.

[August]

Originally Posted by Litotes

That's somewhat of a Norwegian specialty. Aamodt and Kjus even did all five. It cost them in total World Cup wins, generally beaten by event specialists, but paid off handsomely in World Championship and Olympic Games medals.

That's actually a surprising fact, but maybe explained by the thing that event specialists get good points from victories whereas great all-rounders can't get enough points from more competitions yet getting lower points in them. On the other hand, major championship medalists should be able to get good points all season long. I've been wondering this, are Norwegian Alpine skiers more World Ch'ships/Olympics-oriented than others, Norwegians always do well in major ch'ships? Could that be because Nordic skiing is more prominent in Norway and major ch'ships are very important in Nordic skiing?

Right now Svindal is taking another dominant victory, this time in super-g. He leads Adrien Theaux by 0.85 sec.

And Ligety is on fourth position, losing only 0.06 sec to Theaux. He can be a dangerous contender for the overall Cup if he continues like this in super-g and dominates giant slalom.

And a nice 7th place coming for Finland's Andreas Romar in today's super-g, going to be his best result alongside 7th pos. in last year's Val Gardena super-g. And yesterday's downhill was his best downhill performance, 16th.

[Litotes]

Originally Posted by August

That's actually a surprising fact, but maybe explained by the thing that event specialists get good points from victories whereas great all-rounders can't get enough points from more competitions yet getting lower points in them. On the other hand, major championship medalists should be able to get good points all season long. I've been wondering this, are Norwegian Alpine skiers more World Ch'ships/Olympics-oriented than others, Norwegians always do well in major ch'ships? Could that be because Nordic skiing is more prominent in Norway and major ch'ships are very important in Nordic skiing?

Right now Svindal is taking another dominant victory, this time in super-g. He leads Adrien Theaux by 0.85 sec.

And Ligety is on fourth position, losing only 0.06 sec to Theaux. He can be a dangerous contender for the overall Cup if he continues like this in super-g and dominates giant slalom.

And a nice 7th place coming for Finland's Andreas Romar in today's super-g, going to be his best result alongside 7th pos. in last year's Val Gardena super-g. And yesterday's downhill was his best downhill performance, 16th.

Aamodt and Kjus were asked the same question, and they denied being more Championship focused than their competitors. They gave other reasons for their success. During the season they would generally be more tired than the event specialists, because of all the travelling, but not during championships where all events were in the same place. And most importantly - the nervous pressure on them to perform was less. If they started off with a bad race, then there's still four medals left to fight for. If a competitor started off with a bad race then perhaps his championship was already done, or he'd only have one more chance left.

[156mphserve]

I watch it a bit. Used to be a fan of John Kucera but he had a few injuries and hadn't raced in almost 3 years. Raced his first time since those injuries this week. Finished 14th in the Super G which was nice. Hopefully he can continue improving and get back to winning some races like he used to do.

[Kat_YYZ]

I like Svindal
Erik Guay got 6th in the first race; not bad.
I didn't get to watch any of it this weekend

[Mjau!]

I don't watch and sports like alpine skiing. Someone gets crippled every other week!

[Mjau!]

Don't you just hate it when there's a serious crash?? It ruins my entire afternoon!

[August]

What a great win by Ted Ligety in today's giant slalom race. He beat 2nd placed Marcel Hirscher by 1.76 sec. There's no question about who's the best giant slalom skier in the world. If Hirscher wants to defend his overall World Cup title successfully, he should win many giant slaloms and slaloms. And considering Ligety's form, winning giant slaloms is going to be difficult. And even if he had a perfect season in slaloms and giant slaloms, it would be difficult to beat Svindal. Svindal got 2nd places in downhill and super-g, and also a nice 6th place in todays giant slalom after finishing 1st round on 17th place. And also Ligety is nicely in 2nd place in the overall standings with his two giant slalom wins and two 4th places in super-g. Still, there are more downhills and slaloms left than super-g:s and giant slaloms so he won't probably finish that high.

Also, nice to see Davide Simoncelli again on podium, for the first time since March 2010. And another Italian, Manfred Mölgg has had a nice start to his season, again a top4 result. He probably isn't enough good to win slalom or giant slalom Cups this year but he can well be in top 3 in the final standings and be a medal contender in February's World Ch'ships.

In women's side Lindsay Vonn had a great weekend, three victories. She was very dominant in Friday's and Saturday's downhill races but not that dominant today. But if Tina Maze can keep her form in giant slalom and slalom and have results like today's 4th place in super-g, she can be a major contender for the overall title. Actually she now leads the overall standings before Höfl-Riesch, and Vonn is only on 3rd place.

[samanosuke]

we have a thread about it.

Svindal already built a great platform for big crystal globe. Hirscher is his only threat but skiing more or less just two disciplines won't get it done for him like last year when he got lucked with Kostelic's injury in the moment when Ivica already had one hand on globe

As for woman skiing. Have no strength to follow it since Janica Kostelic retired . Vonn just taking what had to be Janica's trophies

[August]

Switzerland's Lara Gut won women's downhill in Val-d'Isère but almost more remarkable was Vonn's first retirement in downhill since January 2007. She's been so solid racer in speed events that after that she hasn't even had more than only three retiments in super-G.

Vonn's retirement then gave Maze a goof chance to extend her lead in overall points standings. Maze has now a 236-point lead to Höfl-Riesch and a 286-point lead to Vonn. If she continues as well as she's started this season, she has a good chance for the overall title, there are more technical events than speed events remaining in this season.

In men's super-G in Val Gardena, Matteo Marsaglia showed his win in Beaver Creek wasn't a fluke. He had a great run that looked like perfect and as 11th starter he went to a clear lead. The next starter, another Italian, Werner Heel was making even better a run but had a bad finish and lost to Marsaglia by 0.05 sec.

But those two runs were nothing compared to Svindal's run. Svindal beat Marsaglia and win the race by 1.07 sec. And his run wasn't even perfectly clean, he had even bigger lead in the last intermediate but he had quite a big mistake at the last gates but fortunately was able to stay in the track. Norwegians' good day was completed by Kjetil Jansrud finishing 4th, just 0.06 sec behind 3rd placed Heel. And these two Norwegians may do well also in tomorrows downhill. Jansrud was fastest in yesterday's downhill training and Svindal was fastest in Wednesday and 2nd yesterday.

[Dextertje]

At last. Well done Lara