Side by Side Shotguns
Munich
Men face off in Munich parallel slalom; Kostelic takes
the “elegant” event BY HANK MCKEE PHOTOS BY GEPA
Ivica Kostelic and Felix Neureuther meet up in Munich.
Get used to it, suggests Hans Pum, the Austrian Ski Association’s sporting director: World Cup
parallel events are here to stay.
The races in Munich Jan. 2 made up, said Pum, “a really great event.” And he predicts we will
soon see similar races in New York, London or Berlin.
“Here is more about the promotion of the sport that is managed to perfection,” his quote translates.
Perhaps he’s right. Certainly the estimated 25,000 people who danced and sang and partied
around the Olympic Park racecourse enjoyed themselves. They were treated to some reasonable racing as well, though there can
be doubts any of the participants had
specifically trained for parallel slalom.
Ivica Kostelic put his lariat around
the win, earning himself 100 World
Cup points and 32,064 Euros for his
evening’s work.
“It’s very elegant,” said Kostelic of the
event. “You can sleep in the morning,
chill out and race in the afternoon. It’s
really nice, plus it is a new and exciting system.”
The top 16 men were seeded according to the World Cup overall start
list. Kostelic had little trouble with any of his match-ups in the single elimination format. He took
Kjetil Jansrud, Reinfried Herbst, Felix Neureuther and, in the finals, Julien Lizeroux in both runs.
Lizeroux had advanced much more strenuously, splitting runs with Ted Ligety, Aksel Lund Svindal
and third-place finishing Bode Miller.
Miller earned some points and money by stopping Neureuther in the “small final,” getting his best
World Cup result of the season and best since winning the Wengen combined nearly a year ago.
Austrians gained three of the four “fifth place” positions with Romed Baumann, Reinfried Herbst
and Benjamin Raich sharing the placing with Svindal.
