ALPINE SKIING, WORLD CUP. Daniel Albrecht is planning to return to the World Cup ski slopes on Friday. As was stated by "Blick" and "skionline.ch", the 26-year-old from Fiesch will be at the start as a forerunner in the giant slalom of the World Cup Finals in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

This time Albrecht is not only returning to the World Cup ski circuit to give a press briefing as he did in Kitzbuehel. He wants to race exactly 414 days or 9933 hours after his horrible accident in Kitzbuehel and take advantage of the opportunity to ski in a competition-like situation on the World Championships race hill of 2011. The Combined World Champion of 2007 would have like to also start in the speed disciplines but his Coach Sepp Brunner convinced him not to do so as Albrecht had very little practice in downhill and super G in recent time. Additionally, there was only one downhill training in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Tuesday, which seems like very little for a racer who has not been competing in any World Cup downhills for over an year.

One year after his horrendous crash on the Streif piste, Albrecht announced in a press meeting in the forefront of the Hahnenkamm-race in Kitzbuehel to start racing again in the next winter season. Now it seems that Albrecht is already trying to close in on his competitors in Garmisch, before things will get serious again at the season opener in Soelden in October.

Dani Albrecht: "I think it's great that I can start again at a World Cup event, but without the pressure of having to provide a peak performance," Albrecht said.

FISalpine.com
Tuesday 9 March 2010

Bode Miller to skip the 2010 World Cup Finals

It's not really a surprise: Bode Miller announced on his blog on ‘Universal Sports' Website' that he is skipping the 2010 World Cup Finals from Garmisch-Partenkirchen which starts on Wednesday with the men and the women downhill races.

The Olympic gold medalist who flew to California immediately after the Games to visit his 2-year-old daughter Dacey, said his ankle injury is still bothering him. He's in San Diego now getting treatment and is going to take the rest of the season off to rest and recuperate. The 32-year-old is also undecided about next season.

"I decided I'm not going back to Europe to close out the season. My ankle is still bothering me so I'm going to stay in San Diego and get treatment," the quadruple World Champion wrote in his latest blog.

"I've been getting saline and glucose injections at different spots around the joint to help it heal. It's become a chronic injury because I skied on it for so long when it was injured and it never had a chance to heal. Now it hurts when I do different things and especially when I ski. I need to take some time off to let it heal properly. When that's all sorted out, I'll go back over to Europe and do some testing," the first Super-combined Olympic champion added.

"My goal at the beginning of the season was to get ready for the Olympics and to win races in February. I just sort of focused on that and I did that. If I wasn't injured I would have made a separate decision about going to finals but that's not the case. I feel like I accomplished everything I wanted to this season so it's nice to just be able to relax in San Diego and hang out with Dace. The Olympics were a good experience but it's all been pretty positive in my career," Miller also commented.

"I haven't made any decisions about next season. At some point, I'll sit down with Sasha and see where we're at and what kind of program we can put together and I'll make a plan from there. My decision will depend on what we come up with and what sponsors think. A lot of different factors will come into play," the skier from New Hampshire concluded.

Miller, who only decided at the end of last summer to return on the World Cup tour, also skipped the last races of the 2009 season following another ankle injury, lack of motivation and bad skiing at the Val d'Isère World Championships.
For many observers and self-called US experts who criticized him harshly for his unconventional behavior and his bad results in recent seasons, Miller was gone for good and nobody was having regrets.

Fortunately Miller still felt some passion for his sport and decided at the last moment to give it another try. He returned to the US Ski Team after two years of skiing independently and achieved some promising results in January prior capturing three Olympic medals at Whistler Mountain. Suddenly Miller was again ‘the nice guy'.

Certainly one of the greatest talents in ski racing, Miller has also been quite an enigma for the media and his environment since his first years on the circuit back in 1998. Last month, his father Woody told the press at Whistler Mountain that his son was having much fun again on his skis which explained his latest good results.

So let's hope for the interest of the World Cup scene that Bode Miller manages to retain that pleasure this summer, fully recovers his potential from that ankle injury and decides to get back next winter.

PkL
FISalpine.com
Tuesday 9 March 2010