Schladming results

On the shoulders of the giants: Hirscher and Neureuther
crown the new king of Slalom, Kristoffersen

As always great race and atmosphere in Schladming.

Surprising win for the newborn superstar of Slalom: 19-year-old Norse Henrik Kristoffersen.
Maiden win in the temple of Slalom.
Honestly I expected him to feel the pressure, but no, he skied easily in both runs good enough to beat "on field" Hirscher and Neureuther, while Matt, leader after run 1, straddled.
Also good from Dopfer and Pinturault, they are in peak form now.
Expected worse from Moelgg, but the slope was in good conditions also after many runs and this is a course he loves.
Bit of bad luck as Hirscher was in front of Neureuther by just .01s

Tue 28/01 - Men's Slalom Schladming (night race)

Big event for Schladming night race, although there's no Yuasa (no party!)

Two early surprise are Kristoffersen and Thaler entering the first group, first time for both. Worth to notice they are kind of the youngest and the oldest athlete on course.
Kostelic and Moelgg drop off the top7, things could possibly go even worse as beside the lack of shape they've never performed well on ruined courses.

Hirscher should have learnt the lesson from Kitz, and if he wants to win the Globe he must not fail here; this means he must be less aggressive and take the 80-60 points of the 2nd-3rd place rather than get out.
Neureuther, free from all these issues, can just ski for the final victory and has proved more than once that his level is equal to Hirscher's.
Behind them Kristoffersen and Thaler battle for a step of the podium, Pinturault occasinally joins them; Matt, Myhrer and Hargin don't look on the same level but they can always be dangerous.
Dopfer's shape raised recently could worth backing him (though not at current prices) and also Gross in in good shape.
Moelgg and Kostelic among those might be worth opposing.
My picks:

Fri 24/01 - Kitzbuehel men's slalom and Cortina ladies' downhill 1

The most important weekend of men's tour kicks off with the slalom. This is kind of special also because run 1 will be at 12 while run 2 at 17, big gap between the two runs. Note that run 2 will be a night run (watch out for Yuasa)

Pick from ladies' SG was a winner: Schmidhofer 16th finished more or less were I expected her, Ruiz-Castillo made me panic scoring the best intermediate time at Int1, but then she was awful and finished 30th.
Goergl won confirming her good form, and so Hoefl-Riesch close behind and getting more and more close to the Cup; good third place for Nici Hosp.
Maze and Mancuso looked in better shape, and so american Cook; on the other hand Gut, 19th, in falling down almost vertically.

On to men's picks.
Kristoffersen, though he'll start with a worse bib in run 1, is performing better than Moelgg.
Hargin and Neureuther are closer to their opponents than odds suggest. I think Hargin is in great form and that the bad result in Wengen was because of the snow conditions, that didn't let him ski aggressively as he does.
 

Val d'Isere/Alta Badia - results

Made myself a good Christmas gift this weekend (implicit meaning: Christmas comes only once a year!).
Got in all the biggest odds and biggest stakes.

The lost ones were actually conceptually losing ones: Moelgg still has work to do, though he didn't finish far from Richard; Nani DNF-ed but was far behind Luitz, who eventually scored a top10 placement prooving wrong my one-event-man definition of him.

Few words on Maze: she was out of the top10 but I saw flashes of the "old her", I think a mistake in run1, which stole her 1 second or so, mentally affected her even in run2, which was also affected by a long stop just befere her due to course manteinance. I believe January will be a great month for her, Kostelic-style.

I found Val d'Isere ladies GS very interesting: the slope his quite large with humps and inclinations of the ground left and right, and potentially allows to draw different courses, although the key passages are very similar to those of the DH (an hump after few gates and a compression mid-course were you need to bring speed before the final long flat). Unfortunately this year there was little snow, e.g. a hole formed at the height of the third gate and many athletes had difficult there (as said before Maze was stopped while they tried to adjust it).




      

Schladming 2013 - Men's Giant-Slalom

Giant-Slalom today.
Unlike women's giant-slalom yesterday, the starting list list for men's GS has been shortened with a qualification race.
So there'll be "only" 99 athletes on course today.
Run 1 starting at 10:00 CET, course setter Puelacher, Austria's coach.
Run 2 starting at 13:30 CET, course setter Theolier, Italy's coach, formerly France's.

Same slope of yasterday's ladies GS, last part of the "Planai".
Also today icy and steep.






Starting list:
1 421328 SVINDAL Aksel Lund 1982 NOR Head
2 194364 PINTURAULT Alexis 1991 FRA Salomon
3 534562 LIGETY Ted 1984 USA Head
4 292000 BLARDONE Massimiliano 1979 ITA Dynastar
5 202462 DOPFER Fritz 1987 GER Nordica
6 53831 HIRSCHER Marcel 1989 AUT Atomic
7 292491 MOELGG Manfred 1982 ITA Fischer
8 292120 SIMONCELLI Davide 1979 ITA Salomon
9 380260 KOSTELIC Ivica 1979 CRO Fischer
10 180534 SANDELL Marcus 1987 FIN Fischer
11 51007 SCHOERGHOFER Philipp 1983 AUT Fischer
12 191750 FANARA Thomas 1981 FRA Fischer
13 201702 NEUREUTHER Felix 1984 GER Nordica
14 53985 MATHIS Marcel 1991 AUT Head
15 50625 RAICH Benjamin 1978 AUT Atomic
16 501017 MYHRER Andre 1983 SWE Nordica
17 191423 RICHARD Cyprien 1979 FRA Fischer
18 510727 DEFAGO Didier 1977 SUI Rossignol
19 501324 OLSSON Matts 1988 SWE Atomic
20 202437 LUITZ Stefan 1992 GER Rossignol
21 421669 HAUGEN Leif Kristian 1987 NOR Rossignol
22 511313 JANKA Carlo 1986 SUI Atomic
23 194495 FAIVRE Mathieu 1992 FRA Head
24 534959 JITLOFF Tim 1985 USA Fischer
25 294890 NANI Roberto 1988 ITA Voelkl
26 700830 ZAMPA Adam 1990 SVK Salomon
27 511852 CAVIEZEL Gino 1992 SUI Atomic
28 510997 BERTHOD Marc 1983 SUI Salomon
29 561032 JAZBEC Janez 1984 SLO Elan
30 100558 COOK Dustin 1989 CAN Head
31 150398 BANK Ondrej 1980 CZE Elan
32 180627 MALMSTROM Victor 1991 FIN Atomic
33 481006 ZUEV Stepan 1988 RUS Rossignol
34 930160 KELLEY Robby 1990 USA Head
35 103676 BROWN Philip 1991 CAN Rossignol
36 422304 KRISTOFFERSEN Henrik 1994 NOR Rossignol
37 180666 TORSTI Samu 1991 FIN Fischer
38 481327 TRIKHICHEV Pavel 1992 RUS Rossignol
39 561244 KRANJEC Zan 1992 SLO Rossignol
40 531452 BIESEMEYER Thomas 1989 USA Rossignol
41 910004 DEFLORIAN Mirko 1980 MDA
42 180705 PIRINEN Eemeli 1993 FIN Atomic
43 400237 MEINERS Maarten 1992 NED
44 561217 KOSI Klemen 1991 SLO Atomic
45 561254 ZERAK Misel 1992 SLO Rossignol
46 40489 LAIDLAW Luke 1992 AUS
47 481103 ANDRIENKO Aleksander 1990 RUS Rossignol
48 30149 SIMARI BIRKNER Cristian Javier 1980 ARG Atomic
49 410266 GRIFFIN Benjamin 1986 NZL Head
50 380335 ZUBCIC Filip 1993 CRO Atomic
51 302982 OHKOSHI Ryunosuke 1988 JPN
52 303097 ISHII Tomoya 1989 JPN Salomon
53 92534 CHONGAROV Nikola 1989 BUL Volkl
54 20174 VIDOSA Roger 1984 AND
55 350086 HEEB Simon 1991 LIE
56 370022 JENOT Olivier 1988 MON Dynastar
57 30266 GASTALDI Sebastiano 1991 ARG Rossignol
58 20398 VERDU SANCHEZ Joan 1995 AND
59 260110 KIYA DARBANDSARI Mohammad 1989 IRA
60 150495 VRABLIK Martin 1982 CZE Elan
61 390035 SMITH Warren Cummings 1992 EST
62 550054 ZVEJNIEKS Kristaps 1992 LAT
63 410365 BARWOOD Adam 1992 NZL
64 400235 WINKELHORST Steffan 1992 NED
65 700879 ZAMPA Andreas 1993 SVK Salomon
66 20324 OLIVERAS Marc 1991 AND
67 30246 BIRKNER KETELHOHN Jorge F. 1990 ARG
68 380332 VUKELIC Leo 1993 CRO
69 92562 PRISADOV Stefan 1990 BUL
70 310426 VUKICEVIC Marko 1992 SRB
71 680053 GELASHVILI Jaba 1993 GEO Atomic
72 110320 CLARO Eugenio 1993 CHI
73 40349 RISHWORTH Mike 1987 AUS Rossignol
74 700868 FALAT Matej 1993 SVK
75 750088 RISTEVSKI Antonio 1989 MKD
76 170131 FAARUP Christoffer 1992 DAN
77 680041 ABRAMASHVILI Iason 1988 GEO
78 860005 BRACHNER Patrick 1992 AZE
79 460060 BARBU Alexandru 1987 ROU
80 660021 DANILOCHKIN Yuri 1991 BLR
81 230659 VALCAREGGI Massimiliano 1995 GRE
82 800013 TOLA Erjon 1986 ALB
83 80063 LONGHI Jhonatan 1988 BRA Fischer
84 120047 ZHANG Yuxin 1989 CHN
85 240132 FARKAS Norbert 1992 HUN
86 250348 KRISTGEIRSSON Einar-Kristinn 1994 ISL
87 320360 PARK Hyun 1993 KOR
88 280030 VANDEPUT Virgile 1994 ISR
89 710311 RUDIC Marko 1990 BIH
90 740022 NERSISYAN Arsen 1987 ARM Voelkl
91 690672 TELYCHUK Vasyl 1992 UKR
92 60237 GREEFS Sam 1995 BEL
93 360041 YNGLAND Kim 1984 LUX
94 210024 BABIKOV Dmitriy 1990 UZB
95 950000 OETTL REYES Manfred 1993 PER
96 310403 MINIC Mladen 1993 MNE
97 160091 PAPAMICHAEL Constantinos 1993 CYP
98 270055 LYNE Conor 1993 IRE
99 340305 MOHBAT Alexandre 1995 LIB

World Cup leader and local hero Marcel Hirscher reportedly missed bib draw, and hasn't slept much for a muscular trouble at his back.
This should open to another win for Ted Ligety.
Following recent results from french team I'd keep an eye on Pinturault, who also got bib #2.
Current prices for the young frenchman are much higher than I expected.
The low starting bib might be a great advantage, as it's been yesterday for the ladies: Worley, Maze, Fenninger and Zettel were bib number 1, 3, 2, 4 in the order.
Winner: Pinturault 1 unit @21 Lost -1
Podium. Pinturault 1 unit @5 Lost -1


h2h Dopfer - Moelgg - pick Moelgg 2 units @2.24 Won +2.48
The italian usually enjoy icy condition and having his coach as course setter is al little advantage as well.

h2h Simoncelli - Blardone - pick Simoncelli 2 units @1.98 Won +1.96
Blardone had a little crash while practising.
Anyway I fancy Simoncelli who as a more cautious style, with "derapage" before the gate, while Blardone approach it more direcly but on this icy slope a little delay in the line may be hard to recover.

+2.44