Sölden! October 28th & 29th

[Primoz]

I just came back from the hill. Went to ski for few hours, and luckily I was up early enough so I could made few runs before it got really foggy. Snow is relatively good, but wind was already picking up, and top part was so foggy you couldn't see more then till tips of your skis, so it's quite interesting to go down at 60km/h
Some weather forecasts are promising wind from 80 to 120km/h for Sunday and half meter or more snow, so we will see what will happen. I'm just wondering which of these two skis I should pick for Sunday

 

[K2 Rat]

Gut just announced that she will race tomorrow. Guess she figured if Vonn "may" be racing, she might as well also !

 

[4ster]

I'm just wondering which of these two skis I should pick for Sunday
View attachment 32128

Either will have its pros and cons. Personally, I hope you're on the GS!

Gut just announced that she will race tomorrow. Guess she figured if Vonn "may" be racing, she might as well also !

Hmm, I wonder if this "I may race" announcement is a ploy to get more viewers.


Here's hoping for a safe & fair race !

 

[SkiSpeed]

Nothing like some early season drama...time to race!!!

 

[K2 Rat]

The controlled free ski on the race hill was cancelled today due to weather. For those, like the Americans, who trained on it in the past week or so, they certainly are familiar with it. But since it was injected after it was closed for training, I guess it would have been nice to see what the surface is like. But that is what inspection is for !!

 

[Muleski]

Yeah, sounds like weather could be problematic. Fingers crossed that it won't be.

I was interested to see the start list. It's shocking in terms of the USA and CAST. The Canadians have three starters, with one serious contender, and two good up and comers. The USST has MS, maybe LV. Our US Nationals GS champ, Megan McJames, who was not nominated to the USST is racing as an independent. Good for her, I guess, to keep pounding away at it. The fourth is Foreste Peterson, who is now a senior at Dartmouth. She "won" the start because she won the NorAm GS season crown. She was in the USST development system before heading to college. So four starters, two actually on the USST. One "very legit", quite obviously.

Austrians have nine, BTW.

Pretty good indication of the work that is needed {and is hopefully underway} with the USST.

The men's USA start list is bigger. And nothing to get real excited about. I hope that Ligety is actually healthy, strong and skis well {if the race is held}. Tommy Ford is probably feeling pressure to ramp up his results after coming back from a bad injury. Chowder is a SL skier. RCS has upside, and is still young. Second year back after surgery. Then you have three other independents. Tim Jitloff, our best GS skier a year ago was dropped form the team. Hig Roberts has big, big upside, but because he's all of age 26, he was dropped as well. Sammy DuPratt, of U Utah rounds it out.

Again, clear indication of what "Best in the World" meant to those who cited the term. I hope that we can get the overall team back on track, and strong across the board. It's going to take time. I'm prepared to see some ugly days, and hopefully some surprisingly good ones, too.

 

[K2 Rat]

Bib 2 for MS. Bib 32 for LV. McJames with 35 and Peterson in 40. Interesting that Resi Stiegler is forerunning.

 

[Frankly]

To me it's a shame they start the season so early... If the race is cancelled it's probably not a bad thing for the racers as they got some good training up until this point.

Perhaps they should take a concept from other sports and do a scrimmage that doesn't count for points but gives you a chance to see how people measure up with a month afterwards to work hard.

 

[Muleski]

It's the most powerful nation in the sport traditionally "getting" to hold the race at the ice box at the time when every alpine nation is wrapping up training on Euro glaciers, and moving on. Moving it off the calendar would be a real undertaking, no matter how much it would make sense. Can't see that going anywhere.

I'm not enough of a data geek to keep track of injuries there, both in training an in the racing. It seems like it's been more over the past couple of years. I really thought "racing at Soelden is dumb" when Anna Veith blew her knee apart there. This may be a sexist comment, but I don't know if that hill makes sense for the women, in October. I sort of cringe at this news that Gut will make an early comeback there. I think that Vonn will not race.

In a perfect world, I'd start the season on what is generally the best snow on the planet at that time of year, and great weather.....in CO....at the time when you'd start, in November.

But the Euros want to start in Austria, earlier, and then we have Levi, which is IMO, really a dumb one. Levi is proximate to......have no idea. It's in the middle of nowhere. They obviously made a great case years ago to host it. I bet the list to NOT do it there could be fairly lengthy these days.

I'd do the USA and Western Canada in November and early December, then move on to Europe {if there is snow},

At this point, I just want everybody to leave Soelden healthy. It's a long season, and an Olympic year.

 

[K2 Rat]

To me it's a shame they start the season so early... If the race is cancelled it's probably not a bad thing for the racers as they got some good training up until this point.

Perhaps they should take a concept from other sports and do a scrimmage that doesn't count for points but gives you a chance to see how people measure up with a month afterwards to work hard.

Since there is no make-up for these races, it's purpose is what you are saying: a pre-season event to see where everyone is stacking up with their training. However, I don't think all would show up if there were no points. If they could line up enough sponsors, maybe they could just have prize money and teams might then show up.

 

[Frankly]

Moving it off the calendar would be a real undertaking, no matter how much it would make sense. Can't see that going anywhere.

Rather like a government... no big change until there is a crisis.

Post Olympics, when Shiffren collects the only alpine medals (hopefully she stays healthy)... we’ll have a little US Ski Team crisis.

 

[Chris Walker]

To me it's a shame they start the season so early...

To me it's about dang time they got the season started already. I've watched the World Championships and WC finals from last year on my DVR about 5 times each.

 

[Muleski]

Rather like a government... no big change until there is a crisis.

Post Olympics, when Shiffren collects the only alpine medals (hopefully she stays healthy)... we’ll have a little US Ski Team crisis.

Yeah, we will probably see MS medal. Bet on that. We might see LV sneak in for one. Perhaps Ligety will podium. Longer shot. And we might have some miracle from a Breezy Johnson.

But the real issue is that you can't even pull people who are on the team to fill all of your spots for a WC GS. The team has absolutely no depth, and the "criteria" to be named just does not make sense. They also don't have the business sense, guts, or whatever to push some older skiers out the door. I guess they did do that with Jit. Still the second best GS skier in the country.

The USST has always been over the top with the next best young thing in the system. If you medaled at Jr. Worlds, you could then underachieve for the most part for a decade plus, and hang in there. You were once a chosen one.

It still blows me away at how they run that railroad. One $75K employee, when you factor in benefits and total costs, funds about three alpine skiers now paying to be on the team. The head count is insane. Fixing the funding gap is not that impossible.

And everything just seems "stale." I think the coaching ranks are for the most part stale and burned out. Same old. Groundhog Day. Time for change. Of course there will be plenty of homes for the coaches. Everybody wants to hire the jacket. Problem is none really know how to coach kids at this point. Most don't coach, they are logistics managers, van drivers, and they do some video work. Most don't know how to manage. So, in all honesty, most are a risk to hire. But they have the coat, and are automatically level 500. They will all move on.

I know a handful of USST board members and, yeah, I think we'll see some change.
Perhaps "some" is an understatement.

We'll see. Hope we have some pleasant surprises this season.

 

[newfydog]

So, where's the steep part?

 

[Cheizz]

Roughly from the curve in the netting on the right (you can clearly see the 'shoulder' in the slope) to - say - the lowest exit (or break) in the netting on the left side of the run.

 

[Primoz]

Basically whole this what's on photo On top you don't see flat part, which is going left from top break, and on bottom of photo, you don't see flat bottom part. So steep part is pretty much all you see on photo

 

[Muleski]

Knowing @newfydog, I think he was joking.
May have been there. But thanks, as always for the detail, @Primoz.
Where do you typically shoot from?

 

[4ster]

I am impressed that no one has posted any results, thanks!

I was hoping that someone would've put the race on Youtube by now but no such luck. Maybe the race was cancelled? Maybe I should look at Facebook where the results will hit me in the face. Should I just hold out till 7:30pm PDT & hope that it actually airs on NBCSN as it is scheduled. Should I have just stayed up till 2:30am this morning to watch it on my Ipad... Not a chance .

If anyone comes across a link to video of the race, please post it here. Same for the men's tomorrrow.

Thanks

 

[Muleski]

The race was run. All good. We had a tech meltdown in our house with a "solution" that a friend clued me into for the Euro feed. Nope. No success on that for us, but I'm tech challenged.

I was able to watch the NBCSports replay, a while ago online. I'm a Comcast/Xfinity customer. No issues. has the commentary with Porino.

Won't get into results yet!

 

[4ster]

The race was run. All good. We had a tech meltdown in our house with a "solution" that a friend clued me into for the Euro feed. Nope. No success on that for us, but I'm tech challenged.

I was able to watch the NBCSports replay, a while ago online. I'm a Comcast/Xfinity customer. No issues. has the commentary with Porino.

Won't get into results yet!

Thanks, I'll check my NBCsports App again.