The 2022/23 Alpine Ski World Cup season has now reached its conclusion. With the downhill tests scheduled for today, the World Cup Finals, hosted this year by Soldeu, Andorra. A total of nine competitions are scheduled, 4 men’s and 4 women’s (one per specialty) plus a parallel team competition.
We arrive this year at the last chapter of the season with many verdicts already written: in addition to the two general rankings, six of the eight specialty cups have already been awarded. Marco Odermatt and Mikaela Shiffrin have established themselves as dominators in their respective field: the Swiss dominated the general, also taking the giant and super-G classification; the American has accompanied the fifth overall Crystal Ball with the slalom and giant slalom cup. Also in the archive are the two downhill cups, assigned to Aleksander Aamodt Kilde and the blue Sofia Goggia, the fourth in her career.
Therefore, the fate of the women’s super-G and the men’s special slalom remains to be decided, and the races for success in both cases could not be more open and balanced. Let’s start with the women’s super-G, which interests the Italian national team very closely: when the last match is missing and there are still the last 100 points to be awarded to the winner, there are still five athletes with the possibility of success, two of which wear the blue.
Elena Curtoni will compete in Soldeu, on Thursday 16 March, with the red bib of leader of a classification that she leads with 332 points. However, there will be a few calculations for the 32-year-old Italian, given that her advantage over the second, the Swiss Lara Gut Behrami, is just 19 points, less than the difference in points between a win and a second place. Chasing the Austrian Cornelia Huetter and the Norwegian Ragnhild Mowinckel, respectively with 307 and 306 points and still intact chances of triumph. The fifth athlete in the contest is Federica Brignone, who is however a bit detached at 288 and therefore 44 points from the lead.
The situation is too tangled to examine all the possible combinations, but certainly Elena Curtoni would bring home the “cup” with a success, with a second place provided that Gut does not win or with a third place behind Gut and without the victory by one between Huetter and Mowinckel. For Brignone, the situation is difficult but not impossible: in case of full loot, she would win the Cup if Curtoni finished off the podium and Gut at least third. Already with a second place she would find herself having to hope for very favorable combinations and even in the event of 0 of all opponents she would need at least the 45 points of fifth place to take the lead.
A situation not unlike the one just described also occurs in the men’s slalom: here the athletes still involved in the fight for the Specialty Cup are four, but one looks basically cut out. The young Norwegian Lucas Braathen leads the standings with 466 points, chasing the much more experienced compatriot Henrik Kristoffersen with 434. Third place for the Swiss Daniel Yule with 401, with his compatriot Ramon Zenhaeusern with 367.
In fact, the big challengers for the Specialty Cup will be Braathen, Kristoffersen and Yulethe only ones able to win two races in the season. For Zenhausern there is only one possibility: to win and to hope that Braathen doesn’t score, Yule doesn’t place second and Kristoffersen finishes eighth or worse. Braathen starts with the certainty that a victory or a second place will be enough for him to win the Cup, while Kristoffersen and Yule will have to attack and hope. Also in this case there are many combinations and we will analyze them more precisely in the days leading up to the race.
Photo: LaPresse
