With the historically worst slalom result so far in Madonna di Campiglio, Austria’s ski men are going into the short Christmas break. Now the alarm bells are ringing for the approaching slalom month of January, with five more slaloms before the Olympic Games in Beijing.
There is currently disagreement in the World Cup about the type of slope preparation. “We and others believed that this would change and that there would be more water on the slopes. Unfortunately there was no reaction again,” criticized ÖSV racing director Andreas Puelacher. All teams would call for icier slopes. “That makes it safer. We don’t want the aggressiveness, however, we had enough injuries on such slopes.”
The fact is: After the failures of Manuel Feller and Marco Schwarz, the 20th place for Michael Matt was hardly a reason to be happy. Feller has delivered very good giant slaloms so far, but nothing in the slalom. One could not be satisfied “if you wrote two zeros in slalom and finished fourth last year. But: “New year, new luck.”
The giant slalom has also been the positive discipline for Puelacher so far. “There we even surprise with podium places. With the exception of the slalom, we are strong in all other races.” This is especially true of the speed competitions. Puelacher sees the cards for Canada downhill winner Mayer in the overall World Cup against the leading Swiss Marco Odermatt not so badly mixed. “Odermatt is very, very strong. But half of the giant slalom runs are over, while there are still a lot of downhill runs and super-Gs to come.”
The next one in Bormio, where the first training will take place on December 26th.
Source: Nachrichten
