Alpine Skiingwomen's world cup
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After the Olympics, we move towards the last ten races of a season which must award the maximum trophy. Shiffrin and Vlhova, between different problems, will return to Lenzerheide but the Aosta Valley, 254 points away, is not yet cut out while Goggia is thinking first of all about the downhill cup.
Monday 21 February 2022 4 minutes reading time
World Cup time, with very little space to recover back from China, especially for those who finished the Olympic adventure only on Sunday, with the team event postponed by one day.
On Saturday and Sunday (tests start on Thursday) Crans-Montana will host two descents for the women's circuit, the seventh and eighth of the season, and including the challenges on Mont Lachaux, ten appointments are scheduled with five speed races ( three descents and two super-g) and as many techniques, or three giants and two slaloms.
Restricted fight to Mikaela Shiffrin and Petra Vlhova, the only ones above 1000 points? Probably, but considering the form condition of the contenders, Federica Brignone has not yet been cut out and, not surprisingly, she will be the only one in the top 3 at the start of next weekend's descents. The winner of the 2020 cup, albeit with the lights off (even in the statements), is 254 points from the American, who leads with just 17 points on the holder of the trophy, while Sofia Goggia is just 3 pt behind Fede, but without work on the giant after the injury in Cortina, it is difficult to imagine he could play it even by filling up the descent, where the goal is to conquer the third crystal ball in the discipline (the Crans-Montana weekend was crucial, with Suter at -69 points).
Specialty cup, but super-g, that Brignone will try to win already in the penultimate round scheduled for March 5 in Lenzerheide, and that will be the stage (with giant the next day) of the return to the race of Shiffrin and Vlhova. The American, a veteran of the very disappointing Games without medals, flew last night from Beijing to Europe: she will almost certainly not be in Crans-Montana, even if it is still not 100% excluded, while she will certainly miss the descents on Mont Lachaux. the Slovakian, who also missed the Olympic combined to better recover from the problem in her left ankle tendon that emerged after the gold slalom.
Mikaela and Petra, in fact, will play for the cup on the last eight races: to hope to play with them in the finals, Brignone would need to return to the giant podium (trusting in a performance not of the highest level of Shiffrin and Vlhova) and do the difference in the super-g of Lenzerheide, as well as getting good points from the descents on Saturday and Sunday. Not impossible.
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