14th place finish under the lights at Schladming in front of a home crowd. This has to be extremely disappointing. This after losing to Hargin this Sunday at Kitzbuhel (Hargin had one of the most amazing athletic runs ever ever). I have not seen this one yet but clearly he is not the same slalom skier he has been in years past. My guess is that he has put immense focus on his GS skiing which has produced a big result. There is only so much training time and the men's field in slalom is pretty stacked. Khoroshilov was first (I believe his first win?), Gross second and Neureuther third. Should be fun to watch later.
Was just a combination of several things I guess: He was still sick, had heavy snowfall in the first round with soft snow, being too cautious, then risking waay too much in the second run. He still had his lead of .3 secs in front of Gross in the 2nd run, first checkpoint, despite an impossible save from a mistake, then he wanted too much on the steeps, overskiing it.
He's still the best on hard ice, but we've seen already that he can struggle on softs. The extra muscle mass he has probably doesn't help either?
I am less talking about last night than I am about his season in slalom. I think he has only two wins and none recently. That is not the Hirscher of past years in slalom.
THE major reason is soft snow and warm temperatures. He's best on injected ice. Yes, he has made more mistakes that hurt his time and they were big ones at Schladmig. Snow and hard surfaces will be prepared well at Beaver Creek. I wouldn't bet against him there. He already started to show some weakness in soft snow last season. And add to that they tried an adapt to set up his boots for soft snow and they totally screwed it up. He came back strong after a really dismal stretch last year. He needs a rest and ice and he'll be fine.
I watched the video with the interviews, Hirscher is an amazing guy, He is so ego-less in his interviews and he's actually making fun of himself. He is so pragmatic, about his skiing and his performance, he makes no excuses. He blames himself for not having form and that he struggles on natural snow. He says he has to learn how to ski better on this type of snow. He also said the the Russian skier was sensational and that he hasn't seen skiing like this before. He is optimistic that he can get his form back. He is a gentleman like Roger Federer, a true sportsman. I've never seen Bode of Ted give this kind of interview; Hirscher just lays it all out there.
it's interesting that the soft snow is only an issue for him in SL. A recent GS he won was on soft snow. Is the "touch" required to ski soft snow in SL more subtle than for GS?
I went back and watched this race again. Whereas the soft snow appears to hurt Hirscher, for almost everyone else it appears to help their skiing. Todd Brooker said they got some very dry snow on top of the ice creating "hero" snow (which means dry and very grippy). I ski on this snow all the time in Montana and it is indeed fun and incredibly confidence inspiring. Normally when we watch the top 30 slalom skiers in the world in tough conditions a good portion of the skiing isn't that pretty. On this snow at Schladming the skiing was just absolutely gorgeous from almost everyone. It is definitely worth watching if you haven't seen it.
Using slow mo and the pause button another thing that is evident is that pretty much all the skiers have a good deal of upper body CA but not all of them actually have significant hip CA. Hirscher, Neuruether and Dopfer have a ton and then it's maybe half the skiers have some and the other half have very little. Khoroshilov has very little (plenty of upper body but very limited hip CA). Maybe in the grippy snow more hip CA slows you down which actually makes some sense.
Too much edge in grippy snow and you are slow. Too much edge in a DH race and you are slow. I have to wonder if Khoroshilov's DH experience really paid off in this SL race?
We call it a soft touch, and a soft touch comes from more flexing, and less extension. Remember counter acting is an extending action of the outside leg, when done right it doesn't apply pressure, (until needed) when done late, it's deadly. On soft snow, use up all of your flexed tipping before you counter act, and don't stay extended long enough to create a hard hit, begin flexing again to release. The Russian did this to perfection and had a rounder longer arc, but it was a tight arc.