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SÖLDEN, Austria (AP) — Alpine snowboarding star Petra Vlhova plans to skip some World Cup races this season, abandoning the technique that helped her win the general title final 12 months.
Vlhova was the one skier who began in all 31 occasions of the ladies’s World Cup in 2020-21 however she and her group, led by new head coach Mauro Pini, have determined in opposition to sticking to such gruelling schedule in an Olympic 12 months.
“We’ll go for extra high quality than amount,” Vlhova mentioned Thursday, two days earlier than the World Cup season begins with an enormous slalom on the Rettenbach glacier within the Austrian Alps.
The 2021-22 season, which incorporates the Beijing Olympics in February, consists of 36 World Cup races, evenly divided between technical and pace races, plus one parallel occasion.
Vlhova plans to focus extra on her core occasions of slalom and GS, and solely resolve whether or not to compete in super-G or downhill races as they arrive.
“We’ll go all over the place however we’ll resolve earlier than the race if we go there for pace or if we’ll keep extra targeted GS and slalom,” she mentioned. “In fact, I like pace and I prefer to race downhill and super-G, however it’ll be extra GS and slalom.”
Vlhova is set to grow to be the primary skier from Slovakia to win an Olympic medal, after she entered 5 particular person occasions on the 2018 Pyeongchang Video games however did not make it onto the rostrum.
“Perhaps final season the objective was the general, this 12 months the primary objective goes to be the Olympic Video games,” mentioned Vlhova, including she deliberate “to remain extra quiet and to arrange good” within the buildup to her second Olympics.
Vlhova beat former general champion Lara Intestine-Behrami to the title by 111 factors final season to grow to be the primary general champion from Slovakia.
Nevertheless, she did not win a gold medal on the world championships in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in February and misplaced her slalom season title the next month to Katharina Liensberger after an in depth struggle with the Austrian and American standout Mikaela Shiffrin.
Vlhova began working with Swiss coach Pini in Could, a month after she parted methods together with her longstanding coach Livio Magoni following unflattering remarks on Vlhova’s fashion of snowboarding reportedly made by Magoni in an interview with an Italian newspaper.
The cooperation with Pini, a former coach of Intestine-Behrami, has made Vlhova really feel relaxed going into the season of her title protection.
“I don’t really feel any strain. I attempt to give attention to my snowboarding, nothing extra. I attempt to keep calm and quiet,” she mentioned.
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Extra AP snowboarding: https://apnews.com/hub/snowboarding and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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Eric Willemsen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eWilmedia
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