ALPINE SKI. The Adelboden Organising Committee put up an amazing fight, but in the end Mother Nature won the battle as today’s Audi FIS World Cup men’s giant slalom had to be cancelled due to dense fog and inclement weather conditions.

From the initial Snow Control on 2nd January, the Adelboden team has worked non-stop to ensure the Chuenisbärgli course in Switzerland was ready for the weekend of races. They brought in snow by truck to make up for the warm temperatures and worked round the clock to ensure the conditions were optimal.

Unfortunately, a steady drizzle arrived on Friday afternoon and continued through the night, which alone still wasn’t enough to dampen the chances of the giant slalom as the course was holding up well. But the racers woke up to a heavy fog and after today’s jury inspection concluded at 9:30, it was clear that there would be no chance to stage the giant slalom race.

"Today at 6:00, everything looked like we could race," Peter Willen. "But when the fog came in it created conditions that made it impossible for us to stage the race."

"The OC did everything they could to make sure everything was prepared. Yesterday  everything was ready and looked good," said FIS Race Director Markus Waldner. "Even early this morning it looked like we could race. But the fog put too much moisture in the air and created some problem points on the course, not to mention the poor visibility. With the combination, we could not guarantee good enough racing conditions for our athletes and we had to make the very difficult decision to cancel the race."

Tomorrow the program will proceed as planned with a slalom race at 10:30 and 13:30 CET.

"We will go for it tomorrow," said Waldner. "For sure, it will not be easy as the forecast is much the same, but we will give it a try and hope for the best."

FIS alpine
09 January 2016 08:51