The Alpine Ski World Cup 2016/17 was the 51st season of the Alpine Ski World Cup , which has been held by the FIS since 1967 .
The season began with the World Cup from October 22 to 23, 2016 in Sölden ( Austria ) and ended with the World Cup final from March 15 to 19, 2017 in Aspen ( USA ), the first time in 20 years outside of Europe (then Vail ).
Twelve women shared the 37 race victories. Here was Mikaela Shiffrin eleven successful, followed by Ilka Štuhec with seven and Lara Gut with five wins. In addition to Štuhec, Sofia Goggia and Christine Scheyer also had debut wins . Both Štuhec and Goggia were among the newcomers of the year: neither had a podium finish before. Štuhec was able to secure two discipline rankings (the first in the downhill for the Slovenian Association) and together with Goggia took the place of honor in the overall World Cup ranking behind Shiffrin.
Of all the planned races, six (one of which was canceled) had to be added at a different date and one (men's downhill in Santa Caterina ) had to be canceled without replacement. There was another break in the women's combination in Crans-Montana on February 24th, when the Super-G was stopped after the fall of the first three runners and was later restarted with a shortened start. Nevertheless, three runners from the US ski team ( Mikaela Shiffrin , Lindsey Vonn and Laurenne Ross ) did not participate because the conditions were not safe due to the soft snow.
The decisions in the World Cup rankings
For the women, a certain preliminary decision regarding the overall World Cup had already been made during the World Cup, when Lara Gut had to forego further participation in the World Cup races due to her knee injury. At this point, Shiffrin had 180 points more than the Swiss. On February 26th, Ilka Štuhec was able to secure the combined classification thanks to third place in Crans-Montana.
With the failure of Veronika Velez-Zuzulová in the first round of the Squaw Valley slalom on March 11, the decision in the Slalom World Cup was made in favor of Shiffrin. With the exception of the Super-G classification, the chances for the runners-up in each of the other disciplines were low. In the descent, Štuhec had a lead of 97 points over Sofia Goggia and made everything clear with her victory. The next and closest decision was made in the Super-G, in which Tina Weirather, with her only win this season, converted the 15-point deficit on Štuhec into a 5-point advantage. Since Štuhec announced her non-participation in the slalom on March 17th, the only theoretical question about the overall World Cup victory was answered. In the last race of the season the Giant Slalom World Cup was decided, in which Tessa Worley was ahead with 80 points; the Frenchwoman finally classified herself one place ahead of the fifth-placed Shiffrin. A total of 134 women were able to classify themselves in the overall World Cup ranking.
After the men's combined World Cup with only two races went to Alexis Pinturault on January 13th - as in the previous year - both the overall and the giant slalom and slalom World Cup with the races in Kranjska Gora (4th 5th March), the one in the Super-G even a week earlier in Kvitfjell , when Kjetil Jansrud was 7th enough. In the last descent, Peter Fill secured the discipline classification for the second time in a row by a narrow margin. 153 men were classified in the overall World Cup ranking.
innovation
There was a changed way of assigning start numbers in downhill runs and Super-Gs (including those that were held in the Alpine Combinations). The ten best athletes on the World Cup starting list each chose an odd number from 1 to 19 in the order of their ranking. The athletes who ranked 11 to 20 on the World Cup starting list were given an even number from 2 to 20 by drawing. A draw was also made for the numbers 21 to 30, and those that followed came their turn based on their world ranking.
Comebacks and injuries
Women:
Anna Veith took part in the giant slalom at Semmering for the first time at the end of December, but announced her premature end of the season after the World Championships.
Sara Hector (injured on December 12, 2015 in Åre ) returned to Maribor on January 7 .
Lindsey Vonn did not start again until January 15th (after her injury in Soldeu and after she broke her hand during training in November) on the downhill run in Zauchensee .
Viktoria Rebensburg did not start again in Killington until November after her training crash at the beginning of October .
Eva-Maria Brem started in Sölden on October 22nd , but a training crash a good week later led to serious injuries and thus to the end of the season. The ÖSV women's team shrank through further training falls, namely by Carmen Thalmann on November 21, Cornelia Hütter on January 4 and Mirjam Puchner on February 8 in St. Moritz .
Maria Pietilä Holmner had to take a six-week break from racing after her fall in the giant slalom on Semmering; she returned to racing during the World Championship.
Dustin Cook , who sustained severe knee injuries during training sessions in Pitztal on October 21, 2015, started (after skipping the 2015/16 season) right at the start of the season on October 23 in Sölden, where he competed in the giant slalom 63rd place not qualified for the second run. He did better in the Super-Gs, with his first start (December 2nd in Val d'Isère) earning him 13th place.
The racers Aksel Lund Svindal , Georg Streitberger and Hannes Reichelt , who fell badly on the Hahnenkamm Downhill in January 2016 , returned to the World Cup, as did Matthias Mayer and Ted Ligety , who had an accident on the Val Gardena Downhill in December 2015 , on January 28th Crashed in training in Oberjoch in 2016 . However, after quite good results, Streitberger and Svindal ended the season prematurely. Ligety also returned to the USA in December after four appearances in giant slaloms.
The return of Giuliano Razzoli (fall in the Hahnenkamm Slalom) turned out to be unspectacular.
Fritz Dopfer was only present in two races (giant slalom Sölden with rank 27 and slalom Levi with rank 8) before he had to cancel the season on November 20 in the Zillertal due to a broken tibia and fibula during a training fall.
For combined Olympic champion Sandro Viletta , the season in the World Cup Super-G in Val Gardena ended on December 16 , before it actually started for him: after almost a year off injury, he was only in the Super-G on December 2 Val d'Isère (rank 41) returned and was on the way (with starting number 46) when it tore his legs apart and he then slid head first towards the safety nets, where he tore the cruciate ligament in his right Knee suffered. He was taken away by helicopter. (He had already had a fall in Val Gardena in 2014 and 2015, although he did not finish the season in 2014/15 because of his back pain in Kitzbühel on January 23, 2015/16 he gave up on December 18.)
Christof Innerhofer was thrown through the air in a fall during the Super-Combined Super-G in Santa Caterina , but then after a short break from racing in the Kitzbühel Super-G, he finished second. One day later he also took part in the downhill (rank 17), but as a result he had to give "where" for the rest of the season.
Both for Steven Nyman (third on the Val Gardena run) and for the runner-up from Kitzbühel, Valentin Giraud Moine , the first of the two runs in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (January 27) was fatal when they fell heavily. For them this meant the end of the season.
Marcus Sandell, who had been suffering from severe health problems, also withdrew early on (he did not contest a race from December 10th). Giant slalom specialist Thomas Fanara announced on December 6th that he would not contest any further races due to a knee injury that he sustained two days earlier at 4th place in Val d'Isère.
Worth mentioning
Marcel Hirscher became the sole record holder with the sixth overall World Cup victory (also in series). Both in terms of podium places (107) and the number of World Cup balls (14), he is second in the overall ranking behind Ingemar Stenmark (155/18). The lead of 643 points he achieved is a personal record, but Hermann Maier set the record with 743 points in 2000/01. In the giant slalom there has been no failure in the World Cup since his serious fall on February 6, 2011 in Hinterstoder (and also not at the World Championships and the Olympic Games); except for rank 16 on January 12, 2013 in Adelboden , he did not achieve a lower ranking than rank 6.
For the first time since the 1997/98 season , the Austrian women's team was unable to take first place in the nation ranking.
Austria's women had only won one victory in the 1996/97 season (then Renate Götschl on December 7, 1996 in Vail ). In addition, for the first time since 1987/88 there was no podium finish in the giant slalom. This had previously been the case in this discipline from 1979/80 to 1983/84 and 1986/87 as part of the eleven years of victorylessness (March 1978 to December 1989).
The women's giant slalom in Courchevel (December 20) was interrupted after 16 runners and canceled after 19: For the time being, a new start from the reserve start at 12:30 p.m. was planned, but the gusts of wind did not let up. At that time there was an Italian one-two lead (Goggia before Brignone). A postponement to the next day was not possible for reasons of accommodation. Lara Gut posted: "We are not windsurfers".
In the eleventh full year of her participation in the World Cup, Tina Weirather won the Super-G discipline for the first time with a World Cup ball.
Until 2015/16 the Italian men's team had never been able to win a downhill discipline ranking, but now, thanks to Peter Fill , they did so twice in a row.
After eight years there was in the women's giant slalom with the triple success of the Italians again a podium for only one nation, whereby the Italian women achieved this for the second time after Narvik 1996 (Compagnoni, Panzanini, Kostner).
The dispute with the Norwegian Ski Association over a head sponsorship contract meant that Henrik Kristoffersen did not take part in the first two races of the season (giant slalom Sölden, slalom Levi). Kristoffersen delivered a quite remarkable season with five (partly clear) slalom victories, but in addition to the abstinence in Levi, he weakened in the final phase of the season.
The women's downhill and super-G podium on 4th / 5th March in Jeongseon with Goggia, Vonn and Štuhec is remarkable because it was the first time since 18./19. In February 1989 it happened that there was the same order on the podium twice in a row in one place (at that time it was Michela Figini , Maria Walliser and Michaela Gerg on two descents in Lake Louise ). The departure on March 4th also brought some guesswork around Jasmine Flury and Tamara Tippler , who started with nos. 21 and 22, because of the failure of the timekeeping , which could only be corrected after 25 minutes.
The second place of Dave Ryding in the Kitzbühel Slalom is the first podium place for a Briton since the second place of Konrad Bartelski on December 13, 1981 in the downhill from Val Gardena .
Mikaela Shiffrin dropped out on January 3, 2017 in Zagreb for the first time since December 29, 2012 ( Semmering ) in a slalom race.
Marcel Hirscher
Mikaela Shiffrin
Peter Fill
Ilka Štuhec
Kjetil Jansrud
Tina Weirather
Tessa Worley
Beat Feuz
Erik Guay
Felix Neureuther
Matts Olsson
Alexander Khoroshilov
Dave Ryding
Edit Miklós
Petra Vlhová
Šárka Strachová
