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Let's do the cards at the 2019/2020 Women's World Cup: the Colorado superstar goes for poker, but there are blue hopes ...
Tuesday 24 September 2019 24 minutes reading time
Mikaela Shiffrin against all, conquering what would be her fourth consecutive absolute crystal ball.
If in our analysis of presentation of the favorites for the masculine cup, after the departure of Marcel Hirscher, the situation is very open, the "5 + 5" that we have chosen for the protagonists of the white circus starts from a fixed point: the formidable 24 year old American chased by a series of dangerous adversaries, but with few chances to oust the best Shiffrin.
Among these, in the first band (respectively in 3rd and 5th place) we included Sofia Goggia and Federica Brignone, even though the closest rival, at least on paper, could be Petra Vlhova, already second in the overall of last year.
Here are the 10 names chosen and their possibilities, in a grid that we divide between five credible candidates for the crystal ball and another five that represent possible entries at least for the final podium.
FIRST BAND
1.Mikaela Shiffrin: who can oust her from the throne? With a return like the one shown in the last two years, in other specialties that are not slalom, where it has literally changed the history of the discipline, it is difficult to think that there are athletes able to approach the potential 2000 points and beyond that Mikaela can easily to reach.
Indeed, in the season without major events, it is likely that the 24-year-old American will go hunting for the Tina Maze record (2414 points in the 2012/13 vintage), or rather, she will be able to overcome it without even aiming, given that this year Shiffrin will participate certainly to some quicker tests more than its traditional program, without lifting the accelerator at the end of January, in view of the Olympics or the World Championships, as happened in the last two seasons.
In 2018/19, the dominator of the women's circuit won all the cups available, except for the descent, and it must also be said that in the next World Cup she will also have four combined, a specialty in which she is potentially dominant, to increase the safety margin on rivals. The only chance to stop it? Find a serial winner between slalom and giant that can stand in front of you on several occasions, with Petra Vlhova clearly first suspected especially between the wide doors. The numbers speak for themselves: Shiffrin broke through the 1000 points in the Cup for the first time in the 2014/15 season (4th in overall at 1036), falling only the following year due to Are's injury (December 2015 ), concluding with 648 points having played a small number of races.
From 2016/17 the escalation, with the exponential growth in giant and then in super-g (also winning the first descent of the career in Lake Louise), was absolute with 1643 points in the year of the first "coppone", the one to be clear of the challenge then interrupted with Lara Gut, 1773 in the Olympic season and the 2204 of the last year. In short, it all depends or almost on her ...
2.Petra Vlhova: the Olympic disappointment of PyeongChang seems to have been the positive turning point of the phenomenal slalomgigant Slovak, climbed enormously in the last season then ended in 2nd place overall, albeit more than 800 points away from the great US rival, and in which has conquered a well-deserved gold in the iridescent giant of Are.
Petra, with its Italian staff to follow her, is now the anti-Shiffrin par excellence in technical specialties and in an absolute sense, because starting towards the new season it is to be considered in all respects the first pitfall to prevent poker all ''American.
If we go backwards, the growth of the '95 class, which ended the Olympic season in 5th place, with 888 active points (against 1355 in 2018/19) is evident also in the numbers obtained in the general World Cup. , while in 2016/17 it arrived tenth with 589 lengths. Looking at the topicality and potential of Vlhova, it is clear how the direct confrontation with Shiffrin in slalom and giant (Petra finished 2nd in both specialty rankings in the last vintage) will be crucial to hope to fight for the coppone, but at the same time the Slovak will have to do very well in other specialties where it has very important potential: parallels in the first place, where the challenge is at par, but also in the four combined combinations. The situation is different for the fast races, as the approach to the super-g was discreet, but the difference with Mikaela is still very important and with the possibility that the cup queen will dig the gap especially downhill.
Putting a little pressure on it at the start, between Solden and Levi, could be a key to cracking certainty about what could be a rival for so many more years.
3. Sofia Goggia: finally ready to face again a season without physical problems, the Olympic downhill champion is potentially dominant in the fast races, with the best Stuhec (though back from a serious injury) that could counter it especially in the queen specialty. It is true, there is the Austrian patrol, the great growth of Corinne Suter, but Sofia can have something more than all of them in various contest contexts and therefore collect a very important amount of points, already enough to overcome quota 1000 points.
The key to the Bergamo season could therefore be the giant, where it made at very high levels in 2016/17 (3rd in the specialty cup with 405 points and bronze medal in Sankt Moritz), to then blame too many problems and, above all , the stop in training in October 2018. If Goggia manages to find continuity between the wide doors, the overall podium (at least) would certainly be within reach, as happened three seasons ago with the 3rd final place at 1197 points, only partly replicated by the 958 lengths brought home in the Olympic vintage (with 4th place overall).
Combined and parallel? In the first case, a bit of slalom training could be enough to play some very important placement (Sofia touched on the success in Val d''Isere 2016, let's remember), while in city events or parallel giants it seems objectively more complicated to take home a nice pile of points.
4.Wendy Holdener: the continuity of the Swiss is extraordinary and, let's not forget, we are talking about an athlete who, despite winning very little, is back from a 2nd and a 3rd place in the overall Cup standings of the last two seasons.
Wendy makes the difference in terms of slalom and parallel scores, but with the combined poker provided he will have a wonderful chance to increase his loot, which reached the top in the 2017/18 vintage with 1168 points. In slalom it is clearly the third force (and Hansdotter has also withdrawn) behind Shiffrin and Vlhova, in giant it has reached the first sub-group of merit and has the potential to do well even in super-g. He will have to manage the calendar well, but it is a guarantee to be able to play at least the final podium in the overall, for the third consecutive year, even though it is difficult to compete for the full loot.
The numbers? Twenty-second in 2014/15 with 312 points, sixth in 2015/16 with 817 points, eighth in 2016/17 with 692 points, second in 2017/18 with 1168 and third in 2018/19 with 1079. Difficult not to think that will be constantly in top five ...
5. Federica Brignone: it is the other great blue hope, potentially very close to the values of Goggia itself. Finally, without a summer affected by injuries, as happened in 2017 and 2018, the valdostan multipurpose is able to bring home many points at least in three specialties, but be careful because in parallel so far we have seen little, but can do well in certain contexts.
If we talk about numbers, in the last few years Fede has always stood at between 750 and 900 points, which is enough to get close to the overall podium, given that the first goal of his season will have to be to play for the Coppa del World of giant, absolutely in its ropes in a specialty where, however, the competition is appalling. Twentieth in 2014/15 with 350 points, we climb to 787 the following year with the 8th place finish, to 895 with the 5th place in the 2016/17 Cup, finally falling to 774 in 2017/18 with the 11th place and 764 last season, finishing in sixth place. A little 'as in the case of Holdener, the management of the maxi calendar of competitions will have to be very prudent, perhaps sacrificing some pure weekend of speed (even if for Fede it is difficult to think of giving up the super-g, where now it is competitive on each track) and inserting some more slalom. Giant and combined, however, will be the truth-disciplines for her.
SECOND BAND
6. Viktoria Rebensburg: we were talking about the continuity of Holdener ... well, in the case of the 29-year-old from Kreuth the subject is opposed, but talent and class are not in question for a complete skier capable of winning, from the giant to the descent.
Thinking about the final placement in the Cup, however, there will certainly be points in key specialties such as combined and parallel (7 races in total are not few), and certainly the downhill performance is the one most at risk for "Viki", which can win almost on every track between super-g and giant. It is there that the German woman will have to build the possibility of getting back on the podium of the World Cup, and it would be the third time after the 2015/16 and 2017/18 seasons, when Rebensburg always placed herself in third place. We are talking about a '89 class, but his career at high levels is already ten years old and, at the top ten level in the general classification, part of the 8th place in the 2010/11 vintage (the season following the ' Olympic gold won in Vancouver), passing through the 7th of 2011/12 (947 points), the 6th of 2012/13 (787 points), the 19th of 2013/14 (352 points), and the 11th of 2014/15 (573 points), precisely the third of 2015/16 with the best career score at 1147 (in the last year without major events), the 9th of 2016/17 with 651 points, the third again of 2017/18 with 977 lengths and the fourth place obtained in the last Cup season, with 814 points collected.
7.Michelle Gisin: she is an athlete, the 25-year-old Swiss, in some ways still to a large extent to be discovered. We have seen it begin in the first part of last season, then a physical decline and the serious fall of his brother Marc, in the descent in Val Gardena, have totally conditioned it. He finished in 16th place in the last CdM ranking with 442 active points, but he is a liar considering the potential for Michelle to collect points in almost all specialties. He suffers practically only in giant, for the rest he can fight for the podium from the descent to the super-g, passing through combined, parallel and, even if discontinuous and perhaps not to the levels of his recent past, at least for the top ten in slalom.
She was seventh in the overall (with 868 points to the active) in her best year of the career, the one that then brought her to the Olympic gold in combination with PyeongChang 2018, and we feel we can nominate her as an authentic loose cannon of the next Cup.
8.Nicole Schmidhofer: at 30, he is back from the year of the consecration, with success in the World Cup downhill and 2nd place in super-g behind Shiffrin. The little Austrian sprinter obtained the 771 points that earned her the 5th place in the 2018/19 overall, all among the fast races held last season, without immersing herself in giant, parallel or combined commitments; so it will be also in the next year and it is clear that, especially with the full-time return of Goggia and Stuhec, it would probably already be a success to be repeated in the top five of the CdM Generale with only two specialties available. In the past, it has the 15th place as the second best result, with 448 points to the active, at the end of the 2016/17 season that brought it to the world super-g gold won in Sankt Moritz.
9.Ragnhild Mowinckel: Damocles' sword of the serious knee injury suffered at the Soldeu finals hangs over the Norwegian at the end of its best season in terms of overall placement (seventh at 675 points), but probably not as performance.
The Olympic season, in fact, presented to the world a Mowinckel able to fight for the podium between combined, giant, super-g and downhill (it finished eighth in the Cup with 849 points conquered and very close to many rivals); if the “usual†one returns immediately, the 27-year-old from Molde will be able to play something important even in the individual specialty cups, but certainly it will take time (after a new summer operation) to regain the level that, particularly among the giant's large doors , he had nominated her for a leading role in the female white circus.
10.Lara Gut-Behrami: the winner of the 2015/16 World Cup seems far from those levels, especially after the accident occurred in the warm-up of the slalom race, in the combined World Cup in Sankt Moritz, when it was still in full fight for the crystal ball against Mikaela Shiffrin.
Lara is trying to find herself fighting for at least the cup in "her" specialty, the super-g, where she finished in seventh place last season, in an absolute sense the most negative of the last decade with the 21st place finish and only 356 points collected. He has already stated that he will not engage in combined and will focus strongly on speed disciplines; in addition to the triumph of four years ago, when it collected 1522 points, it climbed to the third step of the podium in the 2013/14 season overall with 1101 points, exceeding 1000 points (4th place at 1023) also in the vintage of the injury that caused her to miss all the post-World Cup races. A stop that has slowed his career to the top, but we believe he can still have the potential for some other big blow.
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