The ladies’ World Cup weekend in French Courchevel marks the start of a major technical event block. With the rescheduling of this weekend’s program, swapping the slalom from Sunday to Saturday while postponing the giant slalom to Sunday due to expected heavy snowfall, the female tech racers will face a series that includes no less than seven events back-to-back. After the races in Courchevel, next up are the make-up slalom events for the Finnish Levi World Cup in Flachau (AUT) for both ladies and men.

The ladies are then scheduled to continue with another pair of technical events in Lienz (AUT) immediately after Christmas on 28th-29th December. The Organizers in East Tyrol are working hard to prepare the race course – the official snow control is set for 19th December.

After Lienz, the ladies World Cup is set to move on to Munich (GER) for the season’s first City Event that will be carried out in a parallel format. The currently qualified racers - the top 16 in the overall World Cup Starting List – are featured here. Although presently bare of snow, the Olympic Mountain still has time until Christmas Eve for when the official Snow Control is formally scheduled. Fortunately the long-term weather forecasts for the Bavarian capital are predicting significantly colder weather.

Even after Munich, the ladies will be headed down to Croatia for another slalom, the Snow Queen Trophy on Zagreb’s Sljeme mountain. This event has truly become a Who’s Who showcase event for the Croatian elite and features an outstanding atmosphere and impeccable logistics. Fingers crossed that a cold spell will hit the Croatian plains before the Holidays.

The string of tech events will allow the technical specialists launch an attack on the dominance of Lindsey Vonn who is reigning supreme with her run of five victories in six World Cups so far. Led by last season’s slalom queen Marlies Schild, who scored her World Cup win 30 in Aspen, Vonn’s challengers during next two weeks will surely include overall World Cup champion Marie Höfl-Riesch and the rest of the strong German team, Sweden’s Maria Pietilä-Holmner, Finland’s Tanja Poutiainen and Veronika Zuzulova (SVK), among others. In giant slalom, the young French and Italian racers will be hungry, as will Germany’s Viktoria Rebensburg who’s not only skiing strong GS but has also made significant strides in the speed events. Exciting times ahead so stay tuned!

FISalpine.com
Thursday 15 December 2011