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SÖLDEN, Austria (AP) — Alpine snowboarding heads into its Olympic season this weekend with the primary World Cup races of a 37-event schedule that appears extra balanced than in earlier years.
Each the lads’s and the ladies’s calendars embody 18 pace races and 18 technical occasions, plus one parallel competitors.
It ought to make for a extra degree taking part in discipline, after slaloms and large slaloms used to considerably outnumber super-G and downhill races, thus favoring technical specialists over pace racers for the general World Cup title.
“It may be attention-grabbing as a result of now it’s the similar in all disciplines. Who desires to battle for the general, I believe, should ski effectively in each (tech and pace),” stated Petra Vlhova, who begins the protection of her first total title at a large slalom on the Rettenbach glacier on Saturday.
The boys open with a GS on the identical hill the next day. The World Cup season culminates with the finals in March in Courchevel and Méribel, the French resorts internet hosting the 2023 world championships, and is interrupted in February for the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
Whereas French racer Alexis Pinturault is regarded by many as a favourite to efficiently defend the lads’s title, Mikaela Shiffrin is extensively anticipated to be a primary contender for the ladies’s title once more after the American standout introduced her return to hurry races, having decreased her schedule nearly completely to slalom and GS final yr.
“Quite a lot of ladies have a really excessive degree of snowboarding, the competitions have been actually difficult and have much more depth than the final years,” stated Shiffrin, who’s aiming for her fourth total title.
“All people is elevating the extent, which is simply cool to be a part of. It might be a little bit bit extra nerve-wracking as effectively, however we now have to see the place all people stacks up. You by no means know till you really get right into a race and see what everyone seems to be doing.”
Slalom and GS are the core occasions for Vlhova, nevertheless the defending champion from Slovakia competed in all 31 races on the ladies’s calendar final season to edge former total champion Lara Intestine-Behrami, who often gathers most of her factors within the pace disciplines.
For 2021-22, the ladies’s calendar consists of 9 races for every of the 4 disciplines.
The scenario is barely completely different on the lads’s aspect, with 10 slaloms and eight large slaloms, and 11 downhills and 7 super-G races.
“With equal possibilities for all it should turn out to be much more thrilling. There will certainly be extra names within the combine for the general,” stated Marco Schwarz, the slalom World Cup champion from Austria who completed third within the males’s total standings final yr. “You continue to have to attend and see the way it works out through the season. Pace races are extra susceptible to climate situations so perhaps not all of them can happen.”
Pinturault, who earned his first massive crystal globe final season by beating Swiss skier Marco Odermatt, noticed one other impediment.
“The scenario is just not 100% honest between tech occasions and pace occasions,” the Frenchman stated. “In case you are a super-G man, then you definately miss 4 races in comparison with the downhillers. In case you are working downhill, super-G and GS, then you’ve got yet another race than slalom, GS and super-G. It must be 100% equal and the one chance for that’s to have 9 races in every self-discipline.”
Pinturault advised that snowboarding may implement a rule which permits athletes to scratch a sure variety of outcomes, so just a few canceled races or unhealthy finishes shouldn’t have a direct affect on the general standings. Biathlon, as an example, has such scratch outcome rule.
Following the election of Johan Eliasch as president of the Worldwide Ski Federation final spring, a workgroup has been put in to develop plans for the way forward for Alpine snowboarding.
The boys’s total titles have been received by technical specialists nearly yearly prior to now decade, with Ivica Kostelic (2011), Marcel Hirscher (2012-19) and Pinturault ending on prime.
The one exception was the 2019-20 season, which was reduce quick in March 2020 amid the coronavirus outbreak. Among the many six races canceled had been twice as many tech occasions, permitting pace specialists Aleksander Aamodt Kilde and Federica Brignone to win the championships.
Brignone was the primary skier from the quicker disciplines to land the ladies’s title since Intestine-Behrami in 2016. Shiffrin (2017-19) and Vlhova, who each began as slalom specialists, took the honors within the following years.
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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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