Gigs

Yep. What a weird race ending with a really cool podium. Also quite funny that whenever hirscher dnf's kristoffersen does the same, just like at the olympics last season

Iirc he was somewhere similar a few years after his Olympic victory, got back into the top 15 or even top 7 around 2015 and now has dropped down the starting order again. This just happens so often in slalom. I remember everyone thinking Mario Matt was finished after he finished outside the top 30 in the 2010 slalom ranking it and being nowhere at the beginning of the 2011 season. He finished that season with two wins and a 2nd place and went on to win a world championship medal and Olympic gold in the following years

Yeah her 2016/17 season was pretty outstanding although still not quite hirscher or shiffrin level. But that doesn't mean she has to be right back to that level again this year. Again one slope doesn't tell you that much. And about kostelic, I'd say she was definitely better in her prime than stuhec in 17

If anything that shows you how little knowledge so called "experts" have. Not saying Austrians don't have an advantage but if anything they have historically always been way better on technical slopes and the only reason why skiers like puchner or ager suddenly have great results is because they are (and always have been for that matter) good at gliding and bad on technical slopes. If it was all about the skis and not about the skiers why would Austrians like veith not benefit from this. Why would the Austrian men (with the exception of max franz) struggle at the gröden downhill year after year. That said I found Stuhec suddenly turning great after maze retired weird too but I think that had more to do with her getting more resources by the Slovenian federation all around and not just getting maze's old ski's which I btw doubt are still used Edit: also people should calm down a bit about stuhec "dominating" the speed disciplines. She just won two races by small margins on a slope that suits her like no other one. she isn't and I' pretty sure won't dominate this downhill and super-g season

Interestingly hirscher wasn't far behind kranjec after his two big mistakes and lost most of the times on the 2nd half of the slope where he didn't make mistakes but was simply missing his top speed. Anyway I really enjoyed a race without a dominator and with lots of skiers making mistakes. Oldschool gs racing

What a run by Innerhofer. Hope he can stay in front, that would be a very deserved home victory

Where on earth did that come from. I mean I know she was good in the training runs but that usually doesn't mean that much. But how of all skiers schmidhofer suddenly turns into a lake Louise specialist is beyond me

Impressive run by Gisin, that time will be hard to beat

That's actually huge blow to her goal of beating the stenmark record. Almost a 4th of her wc wins were in lake Louise (which is an absolutely insane stat btw) and aside from that even if she returns this season if she is injured badly enough to skip lake Louise I doubt she will be back in perfect shape for the next races

Seriously I would be annoyed by Hirschers dominance by now if it wasn't for kristoffersen because if hirscher was gone this discipline would be even more dominated than it is right now

In other news, grass is green

What a 2nd run by Schild. Didn't expect that from her in Levi.

This is savage https://mobile.twitter.com/MarcelHirscher/status/1056464511127961602

And the award for the pun everyone kinda wanted to make but only one actually made goes to...

Those new Austrian suits

Just wanted to let you know that I'm gonna vote

That's really sad. Goggia is always so exciting to watch and in case of top shape Vonn it's always good to have someone around who can challenge her. Usually it would also be sad because one would expect a skier like her to have a shot on the overall world cup but then again Shiffrin will probably have that one pretty much secured come January anyway.

A well organized peloton can easily catch the break. The dangerous thing is, what if the race splits on the descent or some favorites go really early before the break is caught. For the same reason Paris Roubaix is so often won by the break as the peloton thinks it can easily close a 3 or 4 minutes gap until suddenly the peloton blows up in arenberg and nobody is able to organize a proper chase. If something unexpected happens this could be dangerous for the favorites.

MEINE DAMEN UND HERREN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ÖSTERREICH PRÄSENTIERT, AUSTRIA PROUDLY PRESENTS, MASCHIN BY BILDERBUCH

Dennis was very impressive but dumoulin also wasn't in shape, otherwise he doesn't finish basically same time as campanaerts on a really hard and hilly parcours. Dumoulin from last year agains Dennis from this year would be an interesting battle

What are the odds for another Dutch victory today. I'd say the likelihood for Dumoulin winning is well over 50%

Austria is in

RB Salzburg just managed to fail for the cl group stage for the 11th time after already being 2:0 up against Red star Belgrade. also there could be some ridiculously strong groups with Liverpool in pot 3 and inter Milan in pot 4

They wanted to make it in Innsbruck but they had a referendum where as everywhere the people were against the olympics. The Graz option was really only the last hope of the ÖOC knowing the chance to get these olympics was huge. And also to be honest, I'm not surprised about the outcome of the Graz bid at all. It was doomed before it even went official. Innsbruck is in a winter sport crazy region perfectly located and able to organize olympics without big costs, while Graz would have had to build a lot more and is quite far away from the actual winter sport regions. From the first moment onwards it has always been clear that neither the country Styria nor the state Austria wanted these olympic games, that the city would have to organize the Olympics on it's own only with help from the towns where some of the events would have taken place. It was a complete mess that only could have worked without a referendum (as it was planned) but half the population of Graz would have protested if they had actually decided something that important without a referendum. The problem is that because of huge olympic games like Sochi and the bad economic news surrounding those games nobody wants to host olympics anymore. And that's stupid. I mean of course I want olympics in Austria, I'm an Austrian winter sport fan after all, but putting that aside, the costs for Olympic games where no new venues would have to be constructed would be tiny compared to what happened in Sochi. IIrc there was even a study that showed Innsbruck would earn as much money with olympic games than they would have to invest without including the marketing value. I mean just think about that, basically hourlong advertisements shown in the whole world over two weeks and you don't have to pay for it. This development just makes me angry and I already fear the 3rd eastern Asian olympic games in a row where I'll have to stand up at 2 am in the morning.

Yeah, I had exactly the same reaction