L a t e s t  n e w s ..... Vonn stuns slalom specialists to win in Levi with Pieitiae Holmer second and Maria Riesch in third.... Grange wins mens race from Miller and Kostelic .... Chemmy Alcott suffers clean break of ankle in training in North America, expected to be out till New Year .... Lindsey Vonn injures left knee in training Super G in Copper Mountain, no lay off details announced

'The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams' (Eleanor Roosevelt).

The Speed Skiers Velvet Revolution!

It has been spoken about for a long time but after the debacle of the first race in Garmisch, the leading men on the speed tour have stood up and asked the Race Director for the men's tour, Guenther Hujara, to reconsider how the start list for the Speed events is compiled. With only Erik Guay making the podium, let alone the top ten from the first race, Fritz Strobl, Peter Fill, Didier Cuche, Aksel Lund Svindal and Marco Buechel all attended the team captain's meeting for the slalom to show their displeasure at the way things are at the moment.

Marco Buechel from Liechtenstein spoke on behalf of the speed racers when he said that they "were not happy with the start order in the speed events." Currently the top thirty in the WCSL (World Cup Start List) rankings are reversed for the race and this is causing the problem. With the snow conditions and weather having such a dramatic effect on the outcome of the race, Buechel went on to state that "the better they ski, they are being punished with worse start numbers." All Buechel and the leading racers wanted was a fair chance to compete on an even keel. This was a velvet revolution as there was no fist banging, shouting or outrageous demands but more a request for FIS to reconsider how the start order was compiled.  Buechel ended with a request to "think about how you do it and change to make the racing interesting for all.

Didier Cuche spoke strongly of not wanting to win the discipline Crystal Globe with not having won a race all season "but the conditions do not allow me to win at the moment." Cuche went on to say that it was not the organising committee that they were frustrated with as they had done a great job. "We should have stood up after yesterday's race," he admitted, "as the problem was more obvious than today."

So why is the start list done so at the moment? The power of television is an obvious answer as they have often argued that they want the level of anticipation and excitement to grow throughout the race. If you ever have the luck to be at a race, once the top thirty have been down the crowds do dissipate and leave as rarely does a racer come down from outside the top thirty to win. Marc Berthod won from 60 in the slalom in Adelboden but this was after he had qualified in the top thirty for the second run of the race. Talking with Antoine Deneriaz, the Olympic Champion in October, he suggested that the final qualifying run should decide where racers picked their starting position for the race: This would give the young guns a chance to fight for a better position to start from and would also give training meaning.

Hujara was obviously shocked by this display of annoyance by the racers yet refrained from adding anything at the time. "FIS have nothing to add at the moment," he stated but asked the racers to make sure that all the racers put there points across to the National Federations so that it would be discussed in the spring meetings. With the TV cameras from around the skiing globe there, Hujara realised that he had been outflanked and that the racers had reached breaking point in their frustrations.

While Strobl, Fill, Svindal, Cuche and Buechel conducted interviews afterwards to the media, one man absent from both the meeting and the race was Bode Miller. Miller had not raced in the second race as he was frustrated with starting 28 and knowing that he had no chance to win! This point underlined the frustration of many of the racers.