BLOG

The World Cup season opener in Solden has come and gone.  While there was good skiing expectedly from the men, one of the interesting things to note was the strong performance by the French men’s team.  Five of the French men’s team placed within the top 10.  France’s golden child Alex Pinturault, skied a great run and placed ahead of last year’s overall winner, Marcel Hirscher.  However it wasn’t fast enough to beat Ligety’s time. Ligety has really mastered the GS technique and line approach, and although many racers have studied his skiing over the summer they are still unable to knock Ligety off the podium.  

The women’s race was the more exciting of the two races this weekend.  Quite a few surprises took place.  Lara Gut of Switzerland, smoking her competitors and taking the 1st place slot with a 0.84 lead.  This was the first giant slalom win for Switzerland in 10 years.  Lara skied two solid runs, her line line and lack of hesitation allowed her skis to cut through the snow, where some of the other slower skiers threw them sideways.  A dissapointing showing from Tina Maze, who was the favorite to win after her record breaking performance last season.  Tina came in 18th at the end of her second run, her time was 3.03 seconds slower than Lara Gut’s.  In ski racing, 3 second is a really long time.  Tina is not known for sulking, she will take this dissapoint and use it as motivation in her next few training sessions.  No doubt she is probably already on the hill working out what went wrong.  

The best performance from the U.S Ski Team came from 18yr old Mikaela Shiffrin who finished the race 5th, her best GS performance to date.  Mikaela already has 4 slalom World Cup victories under her belt, along with a World Championship win.  Another shocker during the women’s race, was Julia Mancuso’s failure to qualify for a second run.  After a disqualification due to illegal equipment from one of Japan’s team members, Julia squeaked into the second run.  Let’s hope the U.S women have a better showing in Lake Louise and Beaver Creek.