60 Column
Alpine Skiing
By Aleš Smerdel, the Institute for promotion of Sports
The Championship Season
Last winter, sports fans’ main focus was on the Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada. Winter 2011 is reserved for three big World Championships. The most prestigious one is already behind us as the best Alpine Skiers were racing at the prestigious German ski resort Garmisch-Partenkirchen. What a championship for Slovenia it was! Twenty-two years after the gold medal of Mateja Svet, Slovenia once again has the World Champion in the most elite skiing discipline – giant slalom. Tina Maze overcome a series of bad results this winter at the right moment and, in a dramatic battle, won her first gold medal at a major event. The second big event will happen at the end of the February when the Nordic World Ski Championships begin in Oslo, Norway, where Slovenia will once again be among the favourites for medals. And once again women will take the leading role. Petra Majdič, Vesna Fabjan and Katja Višnar are listed between top favourites in the cross-country sprint race. This winter was something special for our sprinters. Petra Majdič made a great comeback after last year’s injury at the Olympic Games, and has already won a few races in the World Cup this season. However, the biggest success of Slovenian cross-country skiing came on 5th February, when Vesna Fabjan and Katja Višnar finished on top two places in Ribinsk, Russia. Ski jumpers will also compete at the same championship, but the form of the Slovenian competitors is not the best this season. It’s been quite a few years since Primož Peterka, Rok Benkovič, Robert Kranjec and others were main contenders for medals. The final major winter event will happen in frigid Khanty-Mansiysk in Siberia between 1st and 13th March, at the Biathlon World Championships. Before the season, the main story in Slovenia was whether Croat Jakov Fak, winner of two medals from the World Championships and the Olympic Games would compete for Slovenia or stay on the Croatian team. After many complications, his wish to compete for Slovenia was granted. Together with Klemen Bauer, they made few good results this season with placements in the top 10. The women’s team did not stay far behind, with Teja Gregorin is the best placed Slovenian in the general classification of World Cup, currently on 9th place. While medals in individual races will be hard to achieve, many count Slovenia among the favourites in a mixed relay race, where two men and two women compete. The final act of the winter will once again happen in Slovenia. Planica will host the best ski jumpers at the World Cup Ski Jumping Finals. This event is every year’s final winter sports event and signals that the summer sports Place your vote season is on the horizon. This year, athletics, swimming and basketfor Sports ball Championships will make candidate summer even exciting.
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The Slovenia Times
see pages 52-55
Who Let the Bull Out? Twenty-two years after Mateja Svet won a gold medal in Alpine skiing at the 1989 world championship, Tina Maze became the second Slovenian to do so when she won the giant slalom event at the Alpine Ski World Championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. By Simon Demšar
T
o be precise, Maze, 27, was actually the first to win an Alpine gold for Slovenia, because Svet was still competing as a member of the Yugoslav team in 1989. Six days before the gold, Maze had won a silver in the super combined. With another silver from the 2009 World Championships in Val d’Isère and two more at last year’s Olympic Games in Vancouver, Maze openly admitted before the race that she had had enough silvers. Another irony is that she missed on the gold in both Val d’Isère giant slalom (GS) and this year’s Garmisch super combined by nine hundredths of a second, but she won the Garmisch GS event by the same nine hundredths. In Van-
couver, she was even closer to the gold – four hundredths. “I’ve been so close before, I’ve lost by a few hundredths and today it worked out for me,” said Maze, who celebrated by performing cartwheels in the finish area. Even before those silvers, Maze had been a regular contender on the World Cup circuit for years, posting her first win, in GS, back in 2002. At the 2003 World’s in St. Moritz, Switzerland, she finished fifth in GS. “GS was my first discipline, so I have a lot of experience in it, and I know I can ski well, and it finally worked out,” she said. With the start of the Garmisch race delayed for two hours by fog and low visibility, Maze’s win was