Sat 15/02 - Ladies Olympic Super-G

I tried to figure out something about ladies Super-G but I came out with nothing.

As seen so far all the events of alpine skiing have been quite crazy, with all the favourites (but Hoefl-Riesch in ladies combined) flopping big and outsiders popping up everywhere.

That's all about this kind of events, where all that matter is being in one of the top three placements, so everyone push to 100% and the space between a big performance and a failure is very narrow, and failure in alpine skiing is also a line just 1 meter wider that results in few cents of second loss. 

Only safe statement about what has happened so far is: "team Switzerland is in excellent form".

And Swiss have few good arrows to shoot in ladies SG: Gut, Gisin and Suter.

Hoefl-Riesch, Maze, Fenninger, Mancuso, Hosp among the others, while Goergl seems to be not liking this snow- she's always dangerous though-, Weirather is in the starting list but her forms should be vary bad after an injury in training that had her missing the downhill, same for Gagnon and Rebensburg -always struggling with health issues.

Opposing these last names is all I advice. With spring-time temperature an early starter winner is much possible, I'm not doing any specific name though as it didn't pay so far (I haven't posted the outcome of ladies DH, a bit late eh?):

Alpine Skiing - some results from La Parva (Chile)

In La Parva took place some speed events valid for the South American Cup, but which involved some names of relevance also for the World Cup.

Men's downhill 1

Josef Ferstl finished in the top 30 only twice in WC, 9th in Garmisch, 30th in Kvitfjell. He has some good placements, with some wins and podiums in European Cup though, and also was 3rd in DH standind in 2012.

Brice Roger, scored several top 30 placements last season in WC and also was 15th at the Championships in Schladming. A good up and comers

Not much to say about Russian Alexander Glebov, he can easily dominate National Champs but no important results on main tour.

Just down the podium Clarey leads the group of France's veteran which includes Fayed, and out of the top10 Bertrand, Theaux, W-Champs DH bronze Poisson, Mermillod-Blondin and W-Champs SG silver De Tessieres.

Other interesting names: UK's hope Crawford and Baldwin, who's found several top10 finish here in Chile; Slovenia's Perko and Sporn

Men's Downhill 2

Josef Ferstl doubled the succes, followed by his countryman Andreas Strodl who hasn't competed since 2011.

France scored a good team-result: Theaux was 3rd, Clarey 5th, Bertrand just behind, while Fayed, Poisson, Mermillod-Blondin and De Tessieres ended inside the top 20. Roger didn't race.

Good 4th place for combined specialist Zrncic-Dim and the two Britons both in the top 10

Women's Downhill 1

Swiss team makes big thing from the start placing all the atlethes in the top 10.

4th placed Joana Haehlen is the only new name, she has never raced

in WC, some good placements in European Cup and couple of medals at the Junior Champs.

Good 3rd place for Slovenian Stuhec, and two Russian novice Yakovishina 10th followed by her countrywoman Bedareva, both class '92.

All Ferk and Brodnik from Slovenia and Weirather from Liechtenstein finished inside the top 20.

Women's Downhill 2

Switzerland still dominating. Gut didn't take part as well as Weirather.

Another top 10 finish for Stuhec and Yakovishina while Bedareva was 11th again. 

Gisin showed great appreciation for La Parva on her blog, even though internet and news have some difficulties to make their way up there.

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Ladies' Giant-Slalom - Ofterschwang

Bad conditions for warm temperature and salts used to keep the slope in good shape.
Low numbers should be advantaged, for the course should be early marked and become more and more difficult as race goes on.

h2h Curtoni - Gisin - pick Gisin 2 units @2.32 Lost -2
Both not in great shape, although everything seems to point in Gisin's direction.
Gisin has a broken hand since a crash at the World championships, her starting number though is good enough, no.9.
Curtoni hasn't trained since the world championships for back problems, she's got a bad bib, 16, if course early goes bad she should find it in very bad conditions.

Winner: Fenninger 1 unit @5.50 Won +4.5
Fenninger is very technical and she's also light and should do good enough on this snow.
Other top competitors like Maze, Riesch, Rebensbur are much heavier than Fenninger.

+2.5
Incredibly good from Curtoni, and incredibly bad from Gisin.
Fenninger confirmed her appreciation for strange weather condition winning with two great runs