Levi confirmed yesterday. WC Slalom season starts.

Here we are again! 10 days from the ladies' free ski on the race hill in Levi, Finland. Levi is a very interesting place. Getting there is a struggle, it is only light out this time of year for about 2-3 hours. Please notice I said light out, not sun. The sun sort of sweeps over the hilltops above the arctic circle in early November for about an hour and a half. You see this dull, yellowish orb straining to light the earth and warm all the creatures below. It does so feebly and ineffectively. Then, as quickly as it scraped the tree tops, it's gone and it's back to the darkness. Leaving teams to find very creative ways to keep busy. Train a little on the hill, eat some lunch, take a nap, do some conditioning. And then, well then what? Watch some video....ok then what? Exactly why there are more "restaurants" in Levi than any other establishment. Pubs, bars, discos, whatever you want to call them. They are everywhere, and they are packed! Try the Wanha Hullu Poro for starters, and go from there.

There are all sorts of ways to get ready for Levi. The one most teams have settled on is to get themselves to Lapland somehow and train a few days. Get used to the lack of sunlight and the funky schedule. The American boys are going to Taernaby, Sweden. The famous hometown of Ingemar and Anja. They will train a few days and then make the drive across the tundra to Levi. On arrival there it is just train, free ski and race.

Yesterday ,Hans Pieren, the Technical Race Director for the FIS, approved the hill in Levi for the races on the 14th and 15th. He said they would start injecting as soon as possible and be done with the injection by Wednesday night if the weather cooperates. If not, they would have to draw out the process another day or two. This is not a problem and still will leave the crews plenty of time to smooth out the surface and get the protection and finish area all done. According to Hans, they will use 2 million liters of water in prepping the hill. That translates to just over 500,000 US Gallons. That hill will be hard. Combine cold weather, no sunshine and 500,000 gallons of water pressure-injected into the hill, you will get some very hard snow. Ice? Yeah, ok, ice. Ski areas don't like that word so we don't use it. The "Levi Black" trail will be shiny. And as it gets slipped off by the ski school and then the track gets slipped by the athletes, it will be slick. The good thing about the injection is that it will provide a measure of difficulty to an otherwise benign hill.

"Levi Black": Last year, the qualifying margin for the women was 2.16 seconds, for the men it was 1.40 seconds. That is tremendously close racing on both sides. It creates an atmosphere of intensity and risk at the start and on the hill. Everyone is searching for an advantage and trying to find the correct measure of risk. It can also make the course setters try to separate the field a little with tighter course setting or tricky combinations. The thing with Levi, is that it is flat and fairly long, so if you set too many gates it gets monotonous. I still fall on the side of keeping it basic; set to the strength of the hill and let the athletes sort it out.

Levi Black starts out with a long, 20-25 second flat section with a few man made rolls in it. The rolls are fairly sharp and can cause problems (Ted crashed on one of them in 2006). But nonetheless, it is an opening highway where the athletes really do not have to think or plan, just go fast. As they approach 20 seconds or so, there is a sharp break over into the main pitch. it is steep for about 4 or 5 turns but causes little trouble. If the snow is very slick, there can be problems here. For instance, if a given ski company is having problems with grip on ice, you will notice it there. After about 5 turns it gradually flattens and eventually bends to the right to run-out toward the finish.

For the girls, you will see some difficulty in dealing with the break over into the main pitch and dealing with ice on a pitch. There it is really about skiing cleanly with good grip and making good solid turns until you can let loose into the flat section to the finish. For the guys it is somewhat the same except there will likely be a choice from each athlete about where to start risking coming off the pitch. Some will try to push the envelope higher on the pitch, often based on any mistakes that have been made above and feeling pressure from knowing that the qualification margin normally is so small in Levi.

With an easy hill, perfectly fair conditions and fair light (artificial) you will likely see a similar story as in the past. Couple that with a hill that is not stressful for the course setters and there is an even better chance you will see that kind of very close race.

Course Setters for Soelden, what does it mean for the race?

Every day there seems to be something new to blog about the upcoming FIS World Cup season opener in Soelden, Austria.
As I wrote about on Friday, the hill at Soelden is a unique hill. It is in the middle of a large glacier. It has a very flat start and a very flat finish with an extremely steep pitch in the middle. The course setters for the race have some hard work to do to control speed and get a large percentage of the athletes to the finish. The good part about setting in Soelden is that you rarely have to set anything tricky or difficult to separate the competitors. The hill is difficult enough to take care of that itself. It is a great opportunity to set at the World Cup and allow the hill and the athletes to shine.
The course crew is mixing wet man-made snow into the natural snow that has fallen on the hill and will try to inject the hill later in the week. Probably Wednesday to allow time for the snow to set-up and get consistent.
The course setters for World Cup races are listed at the beginning of the season so everyone knows who is setting for the entire season. World Cup coaches know the tendencies of all the course setters and try to prepare their teams accordingly. The men's first run will be set by David Chastan of France and run 2 will be set by Franz Gamper of Norway. Women's setters are Anders Paerson of Sweden and Trevor Wagner of the USA.
What does it mean to the race? The course setters will have an impact on the outcome of the race in both results and finish rate.
CHASTAN (FRA): Given the opportunity, Chastan will set open and fast. Soelden does provide for this as getting minimum gate count is not difficult. This is generally bad news for Ted Ligety. But luckily it is only run 1 and you have that second chance. Look for Svindal, Jansrud, Janka and Fanara as good skiers of Chastan courses.
GAMPER (NOR:) Franz Gamper has not set a lot on the World Cup. Athletes who skied fast when he set in Alta Badia 2nd run last year were Marcus Sandell, Thomas Fanara, Kjietl Jansrud and Marcel Hirscher. Sandell will not race as he is recovering from injury. There were a lot of DNFs last year when he set.
PAERSON (SWE): Anders Paerson has one thing in mind, setting to his daughter's strengths. I think Anja's better years are behind her so having Dad set will not help much. Anders set the second run last year and Zettel, Chemmy Alcott and Megan McJames were fast. Good news for Megan so she can have confidence and get deep into the top 30 after run 1 from her mid 30s start position.
WAGNER (USA): Trevor Wagner is an experienced course setter and likely will do an excellent job helping his girls move up. He set the first run last year and Lindsey was 10th, which at the time was an excellent result for her in GS. Julia was 18th and Megan was 29th, qualifying for her first time at Soelden. Look for strong opening runs from Tanja Poutiainen, Katrin Zettel and Denise Karbon. They have all skied well on Wagner GS courses in the past. They were 1-2-3 last year after run 1 last year which was set by Trevor.
I will be blogging at least 2 more times this week at least. Preview of the field on Wednesday and the USA starters on Friday! Get ready it's coming! Alpine Race Consulting will be speaking at Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon this Saturday and at Seattle Pacific University on Sunday.

Soelden Confirmed, Here's an early preview!

The opening GS races at Soelden, Austria were confirmed today after the final snow inspection by the FIS. Not much of a surprise considering the normal mid-October snow storm hit Soelden as it has every year in the last 8 except for October, 2006. Couple that with top to bottom snow making on the race hill with cold temperatures and you can count on the race happening. You can also count on the race preparation crew there to start the injection process. The snow should be very hard and fair.

The Hill: The race hill in Soelden is unique on the World Cup in many ways. It is on a glacier, in the middle of the glacier so the crazed Austrian fans can watch anywhere on the hill, on their skis with lift access. It is a wide-open snow field with a lot of access. The race opens atop a very large start ramp and opens with about 8 very flat tuck-turns. Then breaks over into a short pitch and bends to the right a little. The pitch is 2-3 turns long, flattens again for 3 turns before breaking over again into a very long, very steep pitch. Depending on the course sets, this pitch could be 11-15 turns long. By far the longest major pitch on the tour. Then it gradually runs-out on a very long flat to the finish.

Courses: There is no problem getting to minimum turns on this hill so look for wide open GS racing with quite a lot of swing. I would think that you would see 26m-28m on the pitch to 32m on the flat approaching the finish.

Tactics: A good, strong start with excellent quality tuck turns to the first pitch for all. Look carefully at when the athletes are breaking their tucks and how much they are setting up the first pitch. Believe it or not, there is a lot of variation in approaches here. Next, look for when they set up the main pitch and how they get direction in their skis to get the appropriate elevation for the main pitch. Good quality turns for 10 turns or so on the pitch gets the job done and then look for when the skiers start to take chances coming into the bottom flat. How straight are they willing to go and how high on the pitch are they when they decide to do it? Then watch for delays on the flat and see who does it right. Also keep in mind that it is the first race and there are a lot of athletes that are not quite ready to go. Look for big mistakes and lots of crashes!

Other issues at Soelden: The women and men both race on the same hill on back to back days. This can beat up the hill pretty badly by the time the men race run 2. Morning runs are characterized by bright sunshine on nice days and the afternoon can be very dark. Very flat light with bumpy conditions makes for exciting racing.

Enjoy the race and the anticipation! This is my favorite time of the year. The work is almost done, the athletes are going to race. Time to find out if you did a good job. And with a month before the next GS, there is time to make changes. Will the season end with a scene like the one in the photo above? I hope so.

More to come on the athletes to watch next week! I am at Gonzaga tomorrow delivering the keynote speech at the PSIA-NW Fall Seminar. 10:45 AM.