Alpine Skiingfemale world cup
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Seventh appointment to analyze, discipline by discipline, the next season of the white circus with our "5 + 5".
Saturday 19 October 2019 12 minutes reading time
The women's slalom seems to be the specialty with the clearest values at the start, as the race at the World Cup could be reduced to just two athletes, Mikaela Shiffrin and Petra Vlhova.
They are the ones who literally dominated last season, with the American champion still clearly ahead of the Slovak, who seems to be able to play on a giant only. Behind them, with Hansdotter's retirement, Gallhuber's return from serious injury and the summer chaos around Liensberger, the "third striker" should still be Wendy Holdener. Let's see everything in detail, giving readers an appointment this evening to analyze the situation in the men's slalom.
WENDY THIRD INCOMODE ...
1. Mikaela Shiffrin: 6 specialty cups (and the series from 2013 to 2019 was interrupted only due to the 'accident of Are at the end of 2015), 40 victories in the World Cup, 4 consecutive world titles and 1 Olympic title, with the only "hole" of 4th place in PyeongChang 2018.
These and many other numbers explain the embarrassing slalom domain of the one who is rewriting the history books of female skiing, at the age of 24 ... There is no need to add much more, except that Mikaela seems to progress technically and mentally, year after year, even having to dedicate to speed, rejecting all rivals even if, this must be said, the "monstre" gaps of the past are no longer there, or at least only at times.
Shiffrin controls and manages everything, just think that in the last two seasons, with the exception of the Olympic slalom, he lost only to Petra Vlhova and on three occasions: to Levi 2017, beaten for 10 cents, to Lenzerheide in January 2018 coming out a few doors from the end, with the race in hand and then went to the same Slovak, and last January to Flachau, folded for 15 cents. In fact, in the 2018/19 season, the Queen of the Cup won 8 races out of 9 ...
2.Petra Vlhova: after the 6th, 5th and 4th place in the ranking of specialties, obtained from 2015/16 to 2017/18, in the last season the 24-year-old of Liptovsky Mikulas raised the level, while showing the greatest improvements in giant. Since Frida Hansdotter's victory at Flachau, on 10 January 2017, she was the only one able to bend Shiffrin in the Cup slalom (even though Holdener came close to banging at the Soldeu finals last March), although winning overall "only "5 times in career. She will need a further step to think about undermining Mikaela from the throne, but she has physical, character and a team that follows her like a shadow to try to play with her in the coming years.
3.Wendy Holdener: its regularity is simply frightening, even if the incredible figure, for the performance it has shown for years, is the fact that the 26-year-old Swiss has not yet won in this specialty between the World Cup and big events.
He missed the Olympic title, left the Are World Championships after signing the best time in the 1st round, finishing 11th in the 2nd place and the same number in 3rd place in the maximum circuit races. From 2016 to 2019, he never got off the podium in the specialty cup (3rd, 3rd, 2nd, 3rd) and the worst result of last season was Killington's 6th place.
In short, behind Shiffrin and Vlhova there is unquestionably Wendy: if she was born in another era, we would already be talking about a multi-winner ...
4. Katharina Liensberger: at the age of 22, she already has all the care of a country, as she represents the great Austrian hope in technical disciplines. The first step he did last season, taking the first podium in Flachau (third behind Vlhova and Shiffrin, after Swenn Larsson's disqualification) and finding a certain consistency that quickly brought her to the first sub-group of merit and 7th place finish in the cup, even though it dropped a bit in the season finale (even if the 4th place in the World Championship is worth it, and how).
Then the summer case exploded (already during the winter of 2018/19, frictions were not lacking within his team), with the choice to switch to Kastle skis which, in fact, was canceled a few weeks later since the debut in Soelden, with the Vorarlberg native forced to return to Rossignol. With all the unknowns of the case, even if the talent is not in question.
5.Anna Swenn Larsson: has returned from the best career year and, at 28, is among the top specialties after winning the world champion silver, but above all having shown quality and constancy throughout the winter , putting second and third career podiums (almost 5 years after the first), between the 2nd place of Maribor and the 3rd in the Stockholm city event (in a specialty where he can bring home important points). Not surprisingly, she finished fourth in the final rankings after she had at most grabbed two ninth places in the 2013/14 and 2017/18 seasons.
THE OTHER PODIUM WOMEN
Perhaps a little 'surprise, Katharina Truppe entered the bulwark of the top 7 in the world and, although it has not yet climbed onto a podium, the 23-year-old from Villach begins to be close to that goal. After the 13th and 12th place of the two previous years, he finished sixth in the specialty cup, obtaining the two best placements of his career between the 5th place of Semmering, at the end of December, and the 4th of Spindleruv Mlyn.
On the other hand, those who had shown a higher potential, but seemed to have lost in the last year, are compatriot Bernadette Schild: in fact, Marlies sister concluded a ninth in the specialty (she was eighth in 2016/17 and above all fifth in the 'Olympic year', but it always seemed far from the levels that led it to win 7 podiums in the World Cup. At 29, she needs an immediate turnaround to get back to the front.
Then there is that loose cannon that responds to the name of Michelle Gisin: the 14th place in the specialty ranking makes little text, having played only four slaloms and all concluded in the top ten, with the best career result arrived at the beginning of the season in Killington (fifth); she returned at least close to the levels everyone expected from her great talent, the "new" Christina Ackermann, the former Geiger who in the summer acquired her husband's surname and climbed back onto a Cup podium after over eight years from the first and only once, albeit in a city event like the one in Stockholm (finished in 2nd place). The 29-year-old from Oberstdorf finished eighth in the specialty cup, collecting four top ten and Zagreb's 5th place as the best result.
Finally Katharina Gallhuber: literally exploded in the 2017/18 season, with the Olympic bronze in PyeongChang (obtained at just 20 years), the 7th place in the final World Cup ranking, she lost the entire last season for the "classic" break of the knee crusader, but is now ready to return to Levi and pose a danger to ... all of them.
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