Four-time champion Lindsey Vonn has not fully recovered from her ankle injury.
Austrian Marcel Hirscher seeks a 5th straight world title while American Lindsey Vonn can also claim a fifth overall—in the alpine ski season which starts tomorrow—in the absence of injury victim Anna Fenninger and retirements including that of Benjamin Raich
DPA
Berlin
The alpine skiing World Cup season begins at the weekend with the traditional curtain raiser giant slaloms in Soelden, with many familiar names absent. Women’s title holder Anna Fenninger of Austria suffered a severe knee injury on Wednesday and is out for the season, four-time champion American Lindsey Vonn is yet to decide whether she will race in the wake of a broken ankle, and Slovenia’s Tina Maze, also a former overall winner, is taking a sabbatical.
US star Bode Miller is also not in Soelden, and there are a host of Austrians who have retired over the past 10 months, including Benjamin Raich, his wife Marlies Raich (nee Schild), Mario Matt, Nicole Hosp and Kathrin Zettel. And while the Raichs became parents of son Josef on Tuesday, naming it “the biggest joy in the world”, the ski world was looking into who will dominate in a season in which the World Cup is the top prize in the absence of World Championships and Olympics.
The men’s side will likely see another title fight between four-time reigning champion Marcel Hirscher of Austria and Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud. Hirscher can become the second man to lift five big crystal globes, following Luxembourg legend Marc Girardelli who achieved his five titles between 1985 and 1993.
“Marcel can make history with a fifth title. That would be very special,” Austrian federation sports director Hans Pum told reporters last week in Vienna.
Jansrud came second last season, and compatriot Aksel Lund Svindal, the 2007 and 2009 overall winner, is also back in the frame after missing most of the last season with a ruptured Achilles tendon.
Vonn’s fitness level will be the main question on the women’s side as to whether she can join Austrian Annemarie Moser-Proell on five overall titles.
The 2010 Olympic downhill champion Vonn has already bettered Moser-Proell’s race win record by five to 67, and even if she sits out of Sunday’s race her speciality disciplines downhill and super-g won’t come until late November.
Vonn came third last year behind the now absent Fenninger and Maze but just 51 points behind was fellow American sensation Mikaela Shiffrin, the two-time reigning world and 2014 Olympic slalom champion.
The 20-year-old will add super-g and super combined races to her previous repertoire of slalom and giant slalom which could lift her right to the top.
“I can certainly pick up a few hundred further points in the super-g and the combined,” she said, but remained cautious overall. “The overall World Cup is still more of a dream. I will mainly focus on winning the slalom and giant slalom crystal globes.”
Shiffrin was the joint Soelden winner with Fenninger last year, and Fenninger herself said before her injury she rated the young American the strongest contender, while also keeping an eye out on German 2010 Olympic giant slalom champion Viktoria Rebensburg, Liechtenstein’s Tina Weirather and Swiss Lara Gut.
The season runs until the March 16-20 finals at the 2017 World Championships hosts St Moritz, with 46 events for men and 42 for the women. The men will also have the first races on the South Korean slopes ahead of the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, a downhill and super-g in Jeongseon on February 6 and 7.
