FIS Worldcup podium 2014/15

[snowmatic]

Good morning Canada - Canadians are back!

Carezza 16/12 2014

After desaster on the last races of Sochi Olympics Canadians are back on the podium!

Caroline Calve is 2nd & Jasey Jay Anderson is 3rd

Caroline Calve kicked out Natalia Soboleva (Russia), even as she was very late on the middle of course on small-finals. She goes for a great chase to take her 3rd place.

Edited December 27, 2014 by snowmatic

[pokkis]

[SunSurfer]

The photo illustrates something I've thought for a while. The AllFlex plate is longer between the axles than other isocline plates with consequences both for binding placement and torsional stiffness.

[snowmatic]

Canadians seems to be realy back. 4 of 5 riders had been qualified for the finals. Only 16 riders w/m can reach the finals. Darren Gardener was the only one which failed for the finals.

AllFlex plates are different to others. We can find now snowboard makers, they no longer support the UPM insert pattern as a default state. They switched to AllFlex pattern since this summer.

For example Oxess show boards with AllFlex pattern only if you click to the Alpine Worldcup boards on website.

Oxess is a tiny Alpine board builder located on Continental Europe. And Oxess just enter to the actual century now last May or June. The Oxess company is now closer to an up-to-date snowboard manufactoring, using a good performance and high accuracy CNC sanding machine (Kuendig, a leading manufacturer of sanding machines) for to produce more usable snowboards.

As we know it well from Nidecker Swiss-Snowboards, which was every time for any things decades ahead (using Kuendig sanding machine since 1997), Oxess would be capable now to go for good-to-ride and good-to-carve Alpine snowboards too, so I hope.

Nidecker boards are crafted than by a much modern high performance CNC sanding machine, which profiled the core in one single pass, including concave profiles on demand.

[big canuck]

Congrats Caroline and Jasey Jay!!!!

Radical! Guess you're going to have to keep racing eh Jasey Jay?

Enjoy it guys

KC

[snowmatic]

As anounced here, there was another Worldcup PSL race Yesterday.

Stay tuned! In 90 minutes we will see the next PAR Worldcup race, for first time ever a team mixed race!

Yesterday it was clear to me, Canadians would perform again, just because rain / heavy rain was anounced up to the peak of the mountain (2300m/7500ft). Remembering me to Vancouver Olympics Canadians perform always if it's raining!

Unfortunately European rain seems to be <way more different to west coast rain of Canada, so Canadians didn't perform as well on slope on Yesterdays PSL race.

Yesterday and today race are hold on Silvretta-Montafon ski resort of Austria. There are a least 4 Worldcup racers (Lukas Mathies PAR / 3 SBX) living on the base of this resorts. Silvretta-Montafon skiresort is a mid size resort with two mountains. At the one mountain, called Nova, You can find sometimes German tourist-hardbooters feeling comfy on easy slopes. While the other one mountain, called Hochjoch, is very popular for major freeride downhill contest, SBX and Alpine slalom races. SBX course is permanent available during season. Alpine slalom races are hold many time there, e.g. FIS races, Europa-cup races, but Austrian PAR Championships too.

Comming back to Yesterdays race, Sigi Grabner told all the valley WC riders did a great performance during the night. SBX WC-riders Markus Schairer and Hämmerle brothers are helping the slope preparing crew during all the night. They had grooming new snow away from the competition-slope since midnight until early morning. Even because SBX was canceled, they offer a great help to Lukas Mathies and all other Alpine slalom riders for to be sure PAR race would be hold the next day!

[snowmatic]

Italian rider Roland Fischnaller was the big winner of all of the first 3 races. 3 starts - 3 wins!

Together with Nadya Ochner (Italy) he won the amazing and vibrating first ever mixed team race, which was hold on an icy slope and blue sky on Silvretta-Montafon ski resort of Austria.

Even Vic Vild did a great show. He race together with his wife and had to equalize her's penalty time of 3.5 seconds and he did it. Penalty time was reduced later during the final runs to 2.5 seconds.

Gardener races together with Calve reaching place 7 on ranking.

The Sobolev's (brother&sister) climb the podium as No. 2

Japaneese rider Masaki Shiba was totaly happy reaching his first podium on FIS Worldcup together with Tomoka Takeuchi. He didn't stop to hit his board, his head and his body like wild after each heat.

Results can be find here.

What did we saw and heard else?

Austrian team has new head coach, even like Italian team and Swiss team had new head coaches too.

Austrian rider Benjamin Karl seems to be back now (4th on actual leader board). As shown before of races on Austrian-snowboard-team webpage (video), he did made a big change. He is leaving SG Snowboards and ride now on Kessler's !

There are now more women on the yellow Deeluxe Track 69 than last Year and Oxess snowboards we can see even more than last Year too.

Sigi Grabner did a great job as a commentator on Austrian Television. He was giving excellent background-informations, like we never get before on any TV comments the last Years.

Edited December 27, 2014 by snowmatic

[snowmatic]

Podium Bad Gastein (AUT) Worldcup Parallel Slalom January 9.

1. KOSIR Zan (SLO), 2. MICK Christoph (ITA), 3. BUSSLER Patrick (GER)

1. LEDECKA Ester (CZE) Age:19, 2. KUMMER Patrizia (SUI), 3. ZOGG Julie (SUI)

Justin Reiter (USA) was the only American reaching the finals (his rank: 16.), no Canadians on finals for this race.

Claudia Riegler (AUT) runs the 1. race in the Year of 2001 and today the 49. FIS-WC race at Bad Gastein. She is now 41 Years old!

Sebastian Kislinger (AUT), 6. on ranking is showing on topsheet the well known and great Austrian Alpine-snowboard-club: http://lipizzanerteam.at/

Temperature was above freezing level, snow was hard-icy, 100% artifical, 22 gates, 3865ft -> 3570ft

Race was holding in single-pass-format. Red course was conspicuous faster and easier to ride than yellow course.

Operator was lucky they could held the race. Because of bad lack of snow, they switched from a night event, like we saw it all the Years before, to a dayligt event. Snow was brought in and some snow was made by machines during the nights.

Many of the riders use still their pants and jackets from the Sochi Olympic games for racing on Worldcup now!

Benjamin Karl runs a Nortwave .950 yellow-yellow on front feet, but yellow-red at rear feet. On front boot he use a red tongue (Raichle?)

Patrizia Kummer switched from green Krypton boots to orange UPZ RC-10. Other woman switched back to older Deeluxe Indy, orange color.

Julia Dujmovits has broken her Kessler at 2. qualification run.

Kessler K-plate in white color - mounted asymetrical on snowboard / Allflex plates which are modified (cut-out the ends)

My conclusion:

FIS should stop that bad singel-run format and switch back to re-run format. At Bad Gastein both courses had been very inequal!

Even if ground is free of snow some days before venue, it's hard to make a consistent slope. There can be a difference in temperature of ground and different water-amount in ground between the left course and right course!

Tomorrow we will see for the 2nd time a team-race. 32 teams of woman&man will participate. At Montafon race we saw only 16 teams.

Don't miss to check the webcam tomorow Saturday from 13:00 UTC. The cam covers the whole race area.

You can zoom in on left upper corner using the 360° view (still-image).

Edited January 10, 2015 by snowmatic

[snowmatic]

Podium Bad Gastein (AUT) Worldcup Parallel Team Slalom January 10.

1. Switzerland-1 (Kummer+Galmarini), 2. Russia-5 (Boldykova+Kolegov), 3. Russia-2 (Soboleva+Sobolev)

32 teams (men and woman) did start. 7 teams of them came from Austria, but Austrian riders didn't succeed. 5 teams came from Russia and 2 of them we can see now on podium.

Temperature was way above freezing level - 63 Fahrenheit! like never ever sawn on an Alpine snowboard Worldcup race. I mean on 63 Fahrenheit rather you play Golf then riding snowboards.

Snow was icyed-up by salt.

Race was hold as a single race format for each team.

Red course was again faster than yellow course on the beginning, but turns than to via-versus close to the end of the race.

Operator was lucky they could held a race again. Because of lack of snow and heavy rain during the night, they need to position the gates to where snow was as high as possible on slope. To the end of race mud became visible, which was the same problem last Year at Bad-Gastein (AUT). (As I note here on post No.4)

Long time ago racing on gates was popular to hold at higher altidue (6000-8000ft). Low altitude races like we see these Years reamins a problem. Thats why I did add the altitude information on thread with race overview. We are now on Global warming. This affect a double to 3-time temperature rise in Austria compared to other countrys on the World.

Vic Wild (Russia, former USA) doesn't race. He is on pain. They talk from his back. Need operation of intervertebral disc next weeks - maybe after Worldchampionchips. Refering to the discussion we had on "WSJ article on lack of funding for US Alpine / Russia's gain" thread I start here, it can be an effect of overdriving his body, similar like you put a dragster motor on a chassis of a Volkswagen.