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."