The women’s alpine World Cup has a couple of steep, technical venues on its regular season line up, but this weekend, it’s about to add one more.
Due to warm temperatures and lack of snow in Maribor, Slovenia, where this weekend’s races were originally slated, the ladies giant slalom and slalom races will take place in Kranjska Gora, where the men have raced for 50 years but where the women last raced back in 2007.
The start of the women’s GS will be slightly lower than the men’s start, but otherwise, the races will take place on the same slope – Kranjska’s notorious Podkoren track.
“The hill is very difficult,” said Slovenia’s top racer Tina Maze. “It’s very steep and very technical.”
The Podkoren GS course starts at 1,278 meters and is 442 meters in length. The slalom course starts at 1,035 and measures 199 meters.
Five years ago, Austrian Nicole Hosp handily won the GS race by nearly a half a second as Nicole Gius took second and Tanja Poutiaimen third. Marlies Schild won the slalom by more than a half second as Sarka Zahrobska and Veronika Zuzulova rounded out the podium. Maze was 25th in the GS and 24th in the slalom.
“I didn’t do well,” Maze recalls. “I had a really bad season that year. I think now I’m skiing much better than I did.”
When the women race in Maribor (the tour has stopped there for 47 years), these days, Maze is clearly the super star of the event. A sea of people can be heard chanting “Tina, Tina” at the bib draw and cheering wildly when it’s her turn on course. The Slovenien, who is now second to Lindsey Vonn in the overall World Cup standings, hopes that Kranjska Gora will bring a similar atmosphere.
“There will be a lot of fans for me there, so I’m happy,” she said. “I’m excited. I can’t wait to feel this atmosphere there.”
Maze is more familiar with the slope than perhaps any other woman on the World Cup, having raced there since she was a child and competing in several national championships at the ski area.
“I was making races there since I was a kid,” she said. “I can 100 percent say I know the hill better than others.”
“… But,” she added, “that doesn’t mean anything.”
The first run of the women’s World Cup GS at Kranjska Gora is scheduled for 10 a.m. local time Saturday, second run at 13:15. The slalom is slated for 9:15 and 12:30 on Sunday.
See what Maze has to say about her home hill in this video.
By Shauna Farnell
