I've seen this script before and it's unlikely to happen. Charlotta Saefvenberg is labouring around while another junior WC Magdalena Fjaellstroem has completely vanished and she beat Gisin and Vlhova at junior WChamps. Sara Hector was supposed to be the next Anja Paerson and that didn't happen either. Sweden has wasted a lot of talent over the years who never quite reached the expectations on the big stage.
That's also the case for other nations, like Jessica Depauli who beat both Shiffrin and Holdener at junior WC or Reto Schmidiger who was like Marco Odermatt before Marco Odermatt. And he fizzled out fast too.
1) Obviously most junior world champions never reach the same level in the seniors, but Sweden has too many talents for all of them to fail. At least one of them will become world class.
2) You can’t just look at junior results, you also have to look at the age, the level of competition (did all the talents who were eligible compete?) and the gaps. Sweden has multiple girls who are already elite at junior level despite being younger than most of the other competitors.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
What do you expect when someone like Chiara Mair who never finished better than 6th on World Cup gets a first group starting bib? Austria has nobody other than Liensberger and Sweden is totally gone once Swenn-Larsson got injured. Not gonna even mention France who has 33 year old Noens as their #1 since like forever.
Sweden will be good again in a couple of years, they have multiple very good talents.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Level of competition is such that four of Vlhova - Liensberger - Shiffrin - Gisin - Holdener were top four in every single race so far this season.
Apparently it takes a generational talent like Lena Dürr to break their dominance ... (although Dürr will most likely DNF in the 2nd run or at least drop a couple of places)
Only 5 different athletes finishing top 4 the whole season is a horrible sign. Not sure if there is any event with less variety at the top. Even luge might be more interesting in that regard.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Didn’t Shiffrin miss the first couple of races? I think there was also an Italian girl who was looking promising for the overall World Cup and then got injured ... ?
Not sure how much relevance an overall World Cup win would have this season under those conditions.
Edit: Lena Dürr in 3rd place after the first run ... the level of competition must be absolutely atrocious.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Mathiou (2002) and Bostroem Mussener (2001) are young enough to come back next year. Very close race, the top 8 were within 0.68 seconds. Not sure if any of the girls can become world class, no one looked like a superior talent.
Sadly another 4th (and 5th) place for Germany. This was the last competition (no downhill/combined/team this year), so here is the final standing of the Marc Hodler Trophy:
1) Austria 61 points
2) Italy 43 points
3) Sweden 40 points
4) Switzerland 36 points
5) Norway 35 points
6) Germany/USA 29 points
8) Slovenia 20 points
Separated by gender:
Men:
1) Austria 42 points
2) Switzerland 30 points
3) Norway 22 points
4) Italy 19 points
5) USA 16 points
6) Germany 10 points
7) France 8 points
8) Sweden/Slovenia 4 points
Women:
1) Sweden 36 points
2) Italy 24 points
3) Austria/Germany 19 points
5) Slovenia 16 points
6) Norway/USA 13 points
8) Switzerland 6 points
Biggest surprises for me:
- Sweden has a lot of very good talents on the women’s side, they could become strong again at senior level in a couple of years.
- The US has some nice talents again (Hurt and Ritchie).
- France did very poorly for their standard, only 9 points overall (1 point better than Finland) and their best results were a 5th place in men’s Super G, a 9th place in men’s giant slalom and a 10th place in women’s slalom.
- Germany and the US were surprisingly close to Norway and Switzerland in the Marc Hodler Trophy.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Competition starts today. There will be a livestream on the official website. Sadly there will only be 3 competitions for each gender (Super G, slalom, giant slalom). Surprisingly GB (on the men’s side) and Croatia (on the women’s side) could win some medals.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Of course, several skiers have done much better in Downhill than Super G over the years. Siebenhofer and B.Johnson from the current ones, Merighetti, Rolland & Kamer from the recently retired and off the top of my head the likes of Kate Pace and Hilary Lindh dating back to the 90s.
Hopefully it will change. Looking at the examples you gave (never heard of most of them) it seems quite rare to be trash in one and very good in the other.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
I really wonder how Weidle can be so great in downhill while being that bad in super G. Is it normal for athletes to be that good in one discipline, while being extremely weak in the other?
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Rodes is 46th in the slalom World Cup (3rd best Croatian), he reached the second run once this season and finished 23rd, so he wouldn’t be a random medalist.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Terrible decision to reverse Top 15 only. Laurie Taylor getting Top 5 with Bib 41 would be ultimate kick in the teeth for FIS. What a joke this is (and yeah, I remember the old days like when Tomba went from 15th to 2nd in Lillehammer OG when reversing Top 15 was still the norm).
I think this way it is more fair for the medal contenders, but obviously it is very unfair for the athlete who was 16th for example. The best solution probably would be the following:
First run: No changes
Second run: Highest bib goes first (no matter how he is ranked after the first run)
Obviously this would be very confusing and anticlimatic.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Strasser had so many mistakes today ... The problem in the race today was, that the slope was that much faster at the higher Numbers.
I don’t think Strassers performance had anything to do with bad conditions, he just reversed back to his normal level after 2 or 3 amazing performances. I wonder if he did anything differently when he made those two podiums. Very hard to believe that it was just „luck“. As a fan I take a medal in downhill any day over a medal in slalom. Downhill is just more interesting and more competitive. I hope that Germany will continue doing great in speed events, even if it means doing worse in (giant) slalom.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Yeah, let's be fair...I mean, a few in the medals, sure, but really no gold has gone to anyone that surprising. Faivre might not have been the favourite, but he's far from some random winner of course.
Yes, not a random winner ...
He is 18th in the giant slalom World Cup and his results this season were 26th, 8th, 20th, 16th, 17th and 15th.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Once again shows that you can’t really take the results in technical disciplines at world champs seriously, especially outside the top 10. The US had one 19th place as the best result of the season and now they have two in the top 15 ...
Germany had a great start, but the last 4 events have been bad, Schmid threw away a 5th medal for Germany. I guess Strasser got back to his normal level, would be interesting to know what he did differently during his amazing run.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Because alpine skiing is a sport measured by time. Even Atomic speciallists told Maryna Gasienica-Daniel how much time she lost with her error in the GS. I can imagine Liensberger has even a bigger report.
So yeah, keep talking nonsense and pretend you know more about alpine skiing than Atomic engineers
I am an „atomic engineer“ myself so maybe I don’t know more than „them“, but also not less ..
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
2) What do the splits matter? If you think like that you can make up a gazillion reasons for why person X should/could have won. No one knows who would have won if everyone would have had a perfect run and I very much doubt that you can judge who was the most likely to win that day. Maybe Liensberger made that mistake because she took more risks/maybe the other racers didn’t make a mistake because they took less risks?
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Posted
We all know how the second run will end: Gold for Sweden/Slovenia (not sure about the other medalist, maybe Austria, but certainly not Germany)
I am not sure whether i prefer Dürr crashing or just being too slow for a medal ...
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
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