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The Magazine for those interested in British and International Ski Racing and Competitive Snowsport
Last updated: 09/05/2008 11:21:19 L a t e s t n e w s ..... 'The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams' (Eleanor Roosevelt). |
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Alpine News2007 - 8 News pieces
Accommodation Bormio has more hotels at all prices and grades than apartment type accommodation. Our contacts in the resort have selected particular hotels and apartment blocks and negotiated special rates. Racers, clubs and coaches wanting to guarantee accommodation in Bormio at peak holiday time at our special rates must contact Mauro on the following email address info@terraltaviaggi.com by 20th October. Rooms are filling fast; some hotels and apartment blocks are already full. Our special arrangements with key hotels and apartment blocks only last until 20 October, we cannot hold them and after that date they will be opened for booking by the general public. If you do not book accommodation in Bormio you may be forced to book 20-60 kilometres away. Race programme We have negotiated an exciting race programme with the resort. All races are planned for the Stelvio and with World Cup downhill before our Championships and World Cup final after we are assured of good race conditions. NOTE THE CHANGES Current plans start with a day/night FIS slalom under floodlights on Sunday 17th February, followed by FIS GS on Monday and FIS SG and Mini GS on Tuesday. The children’s programme, also on the World Cup Stelvio piste will start with SG on Wednesday, GS and mini GS on Thursday and finish with Sl on Friday.
Ski Austria academy reopens in St Christoph (more) British racers in the news: Emma & Sarah Norton: (Strathspey & Badenoch Herald) (more); Jane Sowerby (more), Weber Shandwick appointed by Snowsport GB to raise profile of British skiing, (more)
2006 - 7 News Pieces: Chamonix cancelled! Gunter Hujara announced in Wengen that the Downhill scheduled for next week 25 - 26 January in Chamonix, France has been cancelled due to the conditions. "The first option is to take the races to Val d'Isere," Hujara announced before adding that the "number of beds is the problem. If we cannot get Val d'Isere then we will try and take the races to St Moritz in Switzerland." Ironically both resorts have had to cancel races earlier this winter due to conditions. With news filtering down that the conditions in Are, Sweden, host to the 2007 World Championships, are not too good either, things are looking precarious to say the least at the moment. Cortina will go ahead as planned for the Women next weekend. Wengen training and inspection cancelled. First training and inspection for the 77th running of the Lauberhorn was cancelled due to the adverse weather conditions. With temperatures reaching +5C in the finish, the soft snow needed to be protected. Colder conditions are expected this evening and it is hoped that the training run scheduled for Thursday will go ahead. FIS released a statement saying "During the course inspection the jury and the team captains had to establish that due to the high temperatures the race course is not compact enough. Despite the fact that there is enough snow everywhere the jury decided for safety reasons to cancel today's training. The preparations keep going on normally and the expected lower temperatures of the coming night leave hope that there will be training tomorrow, Thursday 11th January." Val d'Isere cancelled: First it was Soelden that saw green, then St Moritz and now Val d'Isere has been hit with the immortal words cancelled / annulle / Abgesagt! With Lake Louise the only resort on the circuit to have been visited so far snowing any decent snow fall, will the 2006 - 7 World Cup take place purely in North America? FIS have already started to discuss the possibility of taking the World Cup Slalom's into the Indoor Ski Halls but longer slopes still need to be built. This makes the building of SnOasis vital for the future of British skiing and also brings the reality of a World Cup Slalom happening in the UK a possibility in the long term, should it be built! For the time being the fact that the races in historical racing venues in central European resorts are being cancelled left right and centre (bar Levi in Finland) does not bode well for future years (though it does play into the North American resorts hands!). Racer Ready can exclusively report that Chemmy Alcott won an unofficial Super G training race in Panorama last week. Chemmy told Racer Ready that over 30 World Cup racers were there including those from Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia and the French. While the top Austrians and American girls were not taking part this is pretty impressive form going into the races at Lake Louise. Alcott was not too upset that St Moritz has been cancelled as it is not her favourite hill! Alcott hopes that the races will be re-run "somewhere tough and icy, then I will be happy!" With a new day to day Management firm looking after her and having re-signed with her sponsors Witan for another four years (full press release) , things are looking up for Chemmy after a number of years with feet problems. Chemmy has moved onto the Fischer boot that is taking the World Cup by storm this year and is delighted with the way things are in that department! Croatians hit more injury worries! Nika Fleiss, one of the two Croatian girls hoping to live up to the standards set by Janica Kostelic. Having lost World Cup champion Janica Kostelic, who opted not to race this season, Croatia are going to be heavily reliant on the 21-year-old Fleiss, who was the nation's second-highest ranked alpine skier last season. Fleiss had already suffered a light injury trying to avoid a tourist during a training session back in October. The latest accident happened during a giant slalom training session when Fleiss crashed into Bernd Brunner, who was helping train Marlies Schild, the winner of Levi's World Cup opener in Levi two weeks ago. Fleiss was transported to the hospital in Vail, Colorado with a strained knee ligament. She had originally intended to race this weekend's contests in Aspen, but will now need a recovery period of about ten days. Fleiss is expected to return to the slopes in time for Megève's slalom in France in three weeks time. Brunner suffered mild head trauma and reportedly does not remember the accident. (Eurosport) Alain Baxter is a father! Kerr Baxter has been born! Congratulations to Alain and his wife Sheila. Top Spanish racer and World Cup Giant Slalom race winner, Maria Jose Rienda Contreras, is out for the season after a serious crash in training. She is reported to have torn all three sets of ligaments - anterior cruciate, lateral internal and meniscus - while on the slopes of Loveland, Colorado, preparing for the season. "At first I was devastated, but now I have got over it and my objective is to recover as soon as possible," she commented. "Sport is like that." The 31-year-old was one of the hot favourites for victory in the giant slalom in the World Cup after finishing second to Anja Paerson in the final standings in the event last year. Spanish media reports suggest she will be treated by specialists in Vail. (Eurosport) The slalom at Megève, France, originally scheduled for Tuesday, December 19, has been pushed back to Wednesday, December 20. The International Ski Federation (FIS) has moved back the women's slalom 24 hours in order to accommodate television scheduling. Megève, a regular World Cup venue in the between 1967 and 1987, has hosted one previous World Cup event in the last 14 years. The last slalom to be contested in the French Alpine ski resort was in 2004, which was won by Sweden's Anja Paerson. The men will race a super-G in Hinterstoder, Austria on the same Wednesday. (Eurosport) After a 10-year absence, Longines is back in the starting gates, bringing all the emotions of the ‘great white circus’ back to life as the brand takes up its role once more as Official Timekeeper of the FIS Alpine World Cup 2006-2007. The appointment from the International Ski Federation calls Longines back to the slopes to provide timekeeping services for 20 races in the period from November 11th in Levi (Finland) to March 18th in Lenzerheide (Switzerland), the World Cup final. The brands enduring association with skiing began in Chamonix in 1933, and ever since, winter events have been the occasion for Longines to distinguish itself through numerous technological, even revolutionary innovations: the photoelectric-cell-based light beam barrier device (1945), the first luminous scoreboard (1962), time measurement to 1/1000th of a second (1964), an automatic 100 images/second recording system with integrated individual times (1971), time measurement to 1/10,000th of a second (1973), the first superimposition of ‘Longines Timing’ on TV screens (1975), and so on. More than a century after the first Olympic Games of the modern era, the difficulties associated with sports timekeeping have grown considerably. For the men's downhill, for example, the FIS requires 5 intermediate times and 2 speed measurements, in addition to the final result. To this end, photoelectric cells placed at intermediate measuring points are activated manually just before the competitors race past. The FIS requires that each measurement device be equipped with a secondary (backup) timing system, and that it be capable of measurements accurate to 1/100th of a second. The data is passed immediately to TV screens, to each sports commentator, to the Internet and to the press on site at the venues. Longines is proud to link its name and its image once again to this high-level sport (Ski Press world). The BBC have announced that skiing will not get any more money and is in fact having its budget slashed: British ski chief Jason Cockburn has accused UK Sport of being short-sighted after the alpine skiing funding budget for the next four years was slashed. The budget up until the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver has been reduced from £1.72m to £922,000. Cockburn, Snowsport GB's chief executive, told BBC Sport: "We are disappointed by the decision. It will have an adverse effect on our up-and-coming athletes and I believe it is short-sighted." Cockburn said it will be youngsters who are targeting the 2014 and 2018 Games who will see their programme cut. And the men's technical programme - which features slalom skiers Alain and Noel Baxter - will also suffer too. Cockburn said: "UK Sport are increasing funding for the 2012 summer Games because they are being held in London. "Just two years later there will be more focus on British athletes at the Winter Olympics but that is when the impact from the reduced funding will be very evident, and that is a shame. "We are having to concentrate on the athletes who are performing at the top level now instead of the potential stars of the future." As well as cutting the overall budget, the Baxter brothers will no longer receive Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS) individual sponsorship cash because their World Cup and Olympic results were not good enough. Only downhill skiers Finlay Mickel and Chemmy Alcott and snowboarder Zoe Gillings will receive this. UK Sport had stipulated it wanted top-eight results at the 2006 Winter Olympics to guarantee extra funding but Britain's best skiing result was Alcott's 11th in the women's downhill. Cockburn added: "We were aware of the targets but it just did not happen at the Olympics. "Noel has had credible results at two Winter Olympics now and he is only 24 yet his funding is being cut. "If you look at the top 10 male downhill skiers in the world, their average age is 32, so we need to keep funding our athletes. "This means we will have to try and get more commercial income to keep British skiing performing at the highest level." UK Sport announced an overall 20% increase for winter sports with bob skeleton and curling, which have been Britain's most successful events at the last two Olympics, receiving the bulk of the cash. (click here for Ifyouski.com article) The Alpine Inter-Continental Cup with its five regional series (European Cup, Nor-Am Cup, Far East Cup, South America Cup and Australia/New Zealand Cup) represents the most important qualification opportunity and a stepping stone for the FIS Alpine World Cup. The Southern hemisphere Continental Cup seasons are about to start. Traditionally, the South American Cup (SAC) will kick off at Chapelco (ARG) with the ladies’ and men’s giant slalom races on 6th August, 2006. Typical of Argentina, the Chapelco SAC races will be combined with the national championships in slalom and additional FIS races. The SAC will continue with more technical and the first super-g races at Cerro Catedral, Bariloche, and further slalom and giant slalom events in Las Lenas in mid-August. At the end of August, the SAC will move to Chile, featuring the first downhill and other speed races in La Parva, most likely with substantial participation by leading European athletes who will take advantage of the training opportunities. Following a stint at El Colorado, near Santiago de Chile, the last two Cup weekends will take place in Termas de Chillan, a candidate for the 2010 FIS Junior Alpine World Ski Championships. The schedule at Termas de Chillan will also integrate the premiere super combined races in the SAC and all of Southern hemisphere. With just one race a season, there will be no separate standings or World Cup qualification, however. Three super combined races, as required for a valid discipline ranking, are being planned for this year’s European Cup for the first time. Meanwhile, the Australia / New Zealand Cup (ANC) will start at Mt. Hotham (AUS) with several races in the technical disciplines from 28th – 31st August, 2006. Traditionally the ANC is a very important opportunity for young athletes around the region to prove themselves but will be especially so this year due to the retirement of several leading regional skiers following the 2006 Olympic Winter Games. Additional slalom races will be staged at Mt. Buller (AUS), followed by a move to New Zealand where the only speed weekend in this year’s Cup will take place in mid-September, including the debut of the super combined in the ANC and all of Australasia. The grand finale of the ANC will be held in Whakapapa on the North Island (NZE) from 18th-22nd September. (FIS report) Home Nations Development Programme (Male and Female) The Home Nations Development Programme is a ski programme which aims to deliver athletes to the British Ski Team and teach these promising ski racers the basics of adopting an athletic lifestyle and to develop the basic ski and race techniques to the standard required from the British Team. Based in Lofer, Austria at the British Olympic Centre the successful applicant should have as a minimum qualification APC Level 3 or equivalent, and a BASI qualification would be preferred. Applicants should be able to demonstrate experience in running regional or national ski programmes and possess excellent organisational skills and communication skills. All applicants should be fluent in English and have spent a minimum of 12 months in an English speaking country. A second language would be preferred. Applications should be made in writing with accompanying CV to The Chief Executive, SnowsportGB, Hillend, Biggar Road, Midlothian, EH10 7EF. Closing date for applications is Friday 23rd June 2006. Chemmy Alcott sat down with the Press at her annual lunch on Tuesday 23rd May and spoke about the operations that she has had this summer already in an effort to rectify the problems that have beset her feet over the last two seasons. Alcott hopes to be back on snow in July with the rest of the British team and then training back down in South America like last year. This season Alcott plans to remain with Fischer and Tecnica but will be joining forces with the Monaco Ski Team as they have a racer who is doing the same disciplines as she is and this means that they will be able to combine forces with regards to coaches down courses and not relying on second hand news from other nations. This is something that Alcott is looking forward to.
Mick Branch, Australian coach to Finlay Mickel, has officially joined the staff of the American Speed programme. How this will affect Mickel's programme remains to be seen. With Mark Tilston now the head coach for the British Team, appointments to the men's programme in terms of coaches have yet to be finalised.
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