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And they're off!
The World Cup season kicked off this weekend with the traditional (okay,
it's not a very old tradition) GS races on the Soelden glacier in Austria. Tina Maze of Slovenia took the win and shoved Janica Kostelic and Anja Paerson down to the lower steps of the podium in the women's race on Saturday. In today's men's race, Hermann Maier just edged Bode Miller, with Rainer Schoenfelder taking third to earn his first World Cup GS podium. Miller's was the only US podium in the races, although Ted Ligety turned in a fine performance to take eighth in the men's race. The US women were their usual tech-event disappointment, alas, with Kristina Koznick turning in a lackluster 17th as the US's best performance. Soelden is a weird race, and not one that I'd use to predict anything regarding the upcoming season. Still, I think it will be a decent year for the US men. Some of the men are showing signs of fading without ever having hit the heights -- Chip Knight and Erik Schlopy come to mind -- but Daron Rahlves, while continuing strong in speed events, is more and more of a threat in GS, and youngsters like Ligety, Rothrock and Cochran are poised to do well. On the women's side, any of Julia Mancuso, Kirsten Clark, and Jonna Mendes could pull it together for a great year (and in the case of Clark and Mendes, I think it would be almost literally a "click" instead of some kind of incremental improvement). Other than that, it'll be Lindsay Kildow. Sarah Schleper and Kristina Koznick are in the category of, "If they were gonna, they already woulda." |
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