Ted And Shiffy?

Ted And Shiffy?

Postby jbotti » Sun Dec 21, 2014 11:36 am

This has been a very disappointing start for the 2 of the 3 dominant US stars in WC Skiing. Harald has pointed out on his blog and on facebook that Mikeala's boot set up is wrong and is causing all kinds of issues for her. Add to that the fact that some jerk coach of hers has convinced to start training Super G and she is now stivoting in slalom, and this is never good. I will say that the second run at Are looked much better but she was so far back after her first run that she had no shot to podium.

With Ted it's hard to say. It could be that Marcel has finally caught up and surpassed him. I haven't see today's GS at Alta Badia but Hirscher beat Ted by 1.45 seconds, reminiscent of the beating Ted used to put on Hirscher and the rest of the field. Ted did shatter his hand into some pieces and is skiing with screws and plates while it heals. These guys are super human but mere mortals would be quite affected by this. Hard to tell how much this is impacting his skiing and or his training time.

We can say that Lindsey Vonn is ahead of where most (including herself) expected her to be at this point with two wins and a podium in the few races she has participated in this season. She skied out today and fell but she is OK.

Ted is 30 and maybe his time as worlds best GS skier is over. It was a great run and he ranks as the second greatest GS skier ever with 23 WC wins in GS (with surely a few more still to come). But Shiffy should still be dominating and seeing her ski poorly is very disappointing!
Balance: Essential in skiing and in life!
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Re: Ted And Shiffy?

Postby h.harb » Sun Dec 21, 2014 12:39 pm

What is really sad is that there is nothing coming up behind Ted or Shiffrin. This you can easily lay a the door step of Bill Marolt, it's totally the fault of USSA and the US Ski Team's development policies. Coaching ability and development coaching, technical coaching ability and skier training is horrendous in the USA. Norway a country of 5 million total inhabitants is ahead of the US on all counts in World Cup standings as is Sweden. Some countries with less facilities, even like Austria, Switzerland, France, Germany and Italy (where there is no snow and little training available) are ahead of the US.

The Austrians no longer own the best ski training locations. They must scramble like everyone else, going to South America and New Zealand for training. In recent years North America offers the best training in the fall and early winter.

Hirscher was again in a class by himself. Now that atomic is making skis that bend as well as Head GS skis, everyone can see that Hirscher is the best technical skier (GS and Slalom) in the world cup. What are they going to call Ted now? Mr. 2nd Best GS?
A young Croatian skied himself into the top 7. The only performance perhaps as impressive as Hirscher was that of the 21-year-old Croatian Filip Zubcic, who earned just his second-career qualification, skiing from bib 64 to 17th in the second run and ultimately finishing seventh on the day. He did a long stint in the leader’s box until Ligety knocked him out.
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Re: Ted And Shiffy?

Postby jclayton » Mon Dec 29, 2014 12:22 pm

Shiffrin makes brief mention of her boot set up in the report on the GS race but in the slalom she seems to imply her improvement was mainly psychilogical . People seem to still want to keep the "black art" of boot setting up very black .
I didn't see the race , what is the general opinion ?
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Re: Ted And Shiffy?

Postby h.harb » Mon Dec 29, 2014 2:09 pm

What is said on TV isn't what is happening on the hill. I know for a fact that Mikaela's boot set up is totally changed in slalom. You just have to look at her movements and the fact that she had a 3 second turn around compared to her best competitors from her last slalom. This isn't psychological who ever said that doesn't have a clue about what is really going on.
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