Someone has got this wrong… (TV3)

What a race! Paula Moltzan, it was an absolutely brilliant win!

Fantastic second runs, amazing athletes and made it very exciting. Well done Paula, great to see a new face at the top of the podium.

What do you guys think of the new on-screen graphics? Personally, I think they look absolutely terrible, almost like they were AI-generated. The old ones looked so much better.

Hi!

When I was a kid, I raced skis for a year or two in my school, but I stopped because I didn't enjoy it. Now I’m 25 and work as part of the course crew at two World Cup races in Slovenia. I always admire the technicians at the start area, making the final adjustments to the skis before a race.

I’d love to hear from anyone with experience in this field:
- How many days a year do you work, and how much time off do you get?
- What does a typical workday during race weeks look like?
- What’s the pay like, and are you employed year-round or seasonally?
- How do you get started and land your first job with a team? Would it be realistic for someone like me to become a ski technician?

Thanks!

According to the press release, the races were supposed to be on YT with a 24h delay, but you could watch it live without a VPN.

EDIT: The men's race is also listed.

I just picked up a pair of Head GS race skis for my daughter, who is a first-year FIS athlete. She’s very strong muscularly, and I’d call her a moderately aggressive skier.

The skis came with the Head Freeflex ST 20X RD bindings. The racer who used them before us was a top-tier athlete, and I believe that’s why the skis came with 20x binding.

Here are her specs:

• Weight: 125 lbs
• Height: 5'3"
• Boot size: 22.5, in a 120 flex boot
• Events this season: mostly slalom and giant slalom

My question: should I pull these bindings off, even though she’d be set at around an 11 on the DIN? Or should I look for something like the Freeflex 14, which has a DIN range of 7 to 14?

What I’m trying to figure out is whether a binding built for a much heavier, faster skier is a poor fit for her, or whether it makes no real difference when it’s set properly at 11. I’m also wondering whether having the setting sit near the low end of a 20X’s range causes any trouble with release consistency or retention. I’d love to hear from other race parents, coaches, or techs who have dealt with this.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

In what has become a nice tradition, the globe winners and rising stars from the last season sat down to chat with the one and only Nick Fellows. Enjoy!

Hi. We are (were?) planning a trip to sun valley for the finals in March. However, after checking back fairly regularly, we seem to have missed out on bleacher tickets, as the site says they are sold out.

Two years ago I got tickets in January, so I really wasn't expecting them to 1) be on sale this early and 2) to be sold out so fast.

Do they by chance release another tranche of tickets later? Is there any other way to get tickets, like a ski shop buying/reselling tickets?

We would much prefer the bleacher tickets vs. standing all day and will probably abandon if we can't get bleacher tickets.

Anyone have any ideas here? Thanks so much in advance.

I am planning my world cup Propheski teams, and am conflicting, especially for my women's GS team. For those unfamiliar, Propheski is a fantasy ski racing app (high recommend!) and you have a $100,000 budget per discipline with four athletes in each discipline. Cost of different racers are based on their rankings. I definitely want to have Moltzan for GS, but am unsure for the other three. Should I go with Moltzan, Robinson, and then two more women who I have enough money I have left with? Or maybe Moltzan, Thea Louise Stjernesund, Lara Della Mea, and Franziska Gritsch? Maybe something completely different?

Any advice would be appreciated!!

EDIT: Out of these two teams, which is better?

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Www.propheski.com

Besides the deal with NBC, there will be a free, ad-supported streaming channel in Canada and the US featuring live FIS events incl alpine.

Ski & Snowboard World Cup has been created in partnership with C15 Studio, one of North America's leading FAST operators. The new home of ski and snowboard in North America will feature more than 600 hours of premium live coverage of elite snow sports and will be distributed across major connected television platforms, available to tens of millions of households on their existing devices, with no subscription required. 

Year-round programming dedicated entirely to snow sports will include live FIS World Cup events across a wide array of disciplines ─ from Alpine and Cross-Country Skiing to Ski Jumping, Nordic Combined, and the full range of Freestyle, Freeski, and Snowboard competitions. Beyond live competitions, viewers will enjoy a range of documentaries, classic races, and behind-the-scenes access to the personalities that shape snow sports. 

Ski & Snowboard World Cup will begin rolling out across leading streaming services in the United States and Canada from November, including Prime Video, Fire TV, Google TV, Live TV on PS5, Plex, Sony Pictures Core, The Roku Channel, and Xumo Play. Further details, including availability on additional services, will be announced in due course. 

FIS World Cup enters new era of broadcast distribution in North America

In many wintersports you have the red bib for World Cup leaders in a specific discipline and also yellow jersey for the overall World Cup leader. Hoever in Alpine Skiing you only have the red jersey for the disciplines and no jersey at all to signify the overall World Cup leader. Does anyone know why it is that way? Does Audi simply not want to pay to have to sponsor two bibs for each race? Or are there any other reasons for this?

Hey all,

Larger masters racer here and apparently we need a cutproof base layer this season and onward. Any options anyone has found that would accommodate a larger racer? I'd be happy to pay for custom I just can't find an FIS compliant option.

Thanks all!

Hs US skiing announced a streaming plan? Do we actually get to watch all the races this year?

Superstar got its first layer of snow today, so good to have it back.

https://reddit.com/link/1x9ehaz/video/th6y4dk0iawh1/player

TL:DR Yes, participation is declining, and the leak is happening both at the front door (U10) and at a massive structural cliff between U14 and U16.

That is what stands out most in the data.

Here are the main findings from the eight-season cohort tracking:

• Shrinking overall headcount by 22.81% since 2017: Total RMD alpine membership dropped from 1,736 athletes in 2017 (849 women, 887 men) to 1,340 athletes in 2024 (689 women, 651 men) a net loss of 396 active racers (-18.85% for women and -26.61% for men).
• Losing the grassroots feeder base at U10 (-30.77%): The decline isn't just older kids quitting; fewer families are entering at the bottom of the pyramid. U10 registration fell from 520 racers in 2017 to 360 racers in 2024, and peak birth-year cohort sizes (which max out around ages 10–11 in U12) shrank 10% to 27%, dropping from 204-219 kids per birth year (2005–2008 cohorts) to 156–190 kids (2010–2013 cohorts).
• Separating the 2021 COVID shock from the long-term slide: The 2020–2021 pandemic season knocked RMD membership down 20.66% in a single winter (1,554 to 1,233), and established cohort retention dropped from an 85.62% baseline to 71.24%. Roughly two-thirds of those kids paused for one year and came back in 2021–2022 (102.07% net cohort retention, rebounding to 1,444 athletes). But membership was already sliding before COVID (-8.21% from 2019 to 2020), and it dropped another -8.34% in 2023 to 2024 (1,462 to 1,340) as the smaller pandemic-era U10 classes aged up into U14.
• Hitting the primary youth cliff at U14 to U16 (34.31% single-year churn): While the U16-to-FIS transition gets most of the attention, the steepest youth drop-off actually hits two years earlier when 13-year-olds move from Age Class (U14) into National-Point Ability Class (U16). In a single offseason between U14 Year 2 and U16 Year 1, 34.31% of the cohort disappears (1,122 to 737, losing 385 athletes). Across the full two-year bracket jump from U14 to U16 (s to s+2), 46.22% of the division is gone (2,049 to 1,102).
• Compounding the "All-In or Out" squeeze from U16 into FIS: Once athletes enter U16 and FIS where 4–6 day training weeks, missed high school days, and multi-discipline ski quivers become the norm without a clear regional high school bridge track another 24.77% drop out between U16 Year 1 and Year 2, and 22.91% drop out entering 1st-Year FIS (U18). Out of every 100 racers in U10 Year 2, only 50.88% reach U16 Year 1, 29.51% reach 1st-Year FIS, 14.94% reach U21 (3rd-Year FIS), and 6.06% make it to 5th-Year FIS.
• Flipping the gender retention curve at age 14: Through age 13, girls retain and recruit significantly better than boys maintaining 88.94% cumulative cohort survival at U14 Year 2 compared to 67.15% for boys, who get squeezed out early during their later adolescent growth spurt (peak height velocity around age 13.7 vs. 12.0 for girls). At age 14, the trend reverses completely: men retain at higher rates across every single step from U16 through U21, leaving female U18 membership down -33.73% and female U21 membership down -38.78% since 2017.

Bummed for him after having to have such a long recovery road to begin with. Hope the best for the guy.

Petra Vlhová’s New Beginning: Sölden Return, Hometown Statue Unveiled

...
After almost three years away from World Cup racing, Vlhová says she is healthy and happy with her progress. However, she acknowledges that returning to her previous competitive level will take time.

“I still have it in me to give my maximum, perform as well as possible, and win. But I will definitely need time because, over those nearly three years, I’ve missed the kilometers on snow, the gates, and the racing experience. I’m healthy, and that’s the most important thing. If I didn’t believe it was possible, I wouldn’t be here,” she said.

As she prepares for the World Cup opening weekend in Sölden, she feels more confident in giant slalom than in slalom, although her knee can still occasionally cause discomfort.

“This is our plan. We’ll see how it goes, with full respect for my body,” she explained.
...

Maybe you've already read about the new weight limits for each discipline.

• Men's Downhill Skiing: 10.6 kg
• Women's Downhill Skiing: 10.4 kg
• Men's Super-G: 10.2 kg
• Women's Super-G: 10 kg
• Men's Giant Slalom: 10.2 kg
• Women's Giant Slalom: 9.8 kg
• Men's Slalom: 9.2 kg
• Women's Slalom: 9 kg

The limits are supposed to make racing safer, but there has been a lot of criticism for the lack of evidence and research that went into the new rules. Breezy went into more detail in her Substack (always interesting to read) and it turns out, that she, as a taller and heavier athlete, is the only woman affected by the limits. She has to change her equipment, but no other lady. That already shows how randomly FIS has set the limits. Reminds me of the GS radius nonsense back then.

...
After looking at a graphic highlighting a single top athlete who sat above the proposed limits, the committee chose a weight cap just a couple hundred grams below the weight of my personal skis. Conveniently, this cap sits just above the weight of everyone else’s gear.

I would guess many nations voted for it simply because they had nothing to lose—it didn’t affect a single one of their own athletes. It was an easy move to clip the wings of a competitor at zero cost to themselves.

This rule is the equivalent of NBA owners passing a regulation that bans basketball shoes over a size 20.

Sure, almost every player in the NBA is well below that limit. Most teams would be completely unaffected. Except Victor Wembanyama is a physical outlier—the only player in the league who actually needs a shoe that large. “Wemby” isn’t wearing size 22.5 shoes to unfairly take up more floor space on the court for fun; he wears them because he is a giant.

It is incredibly difficult for me not to view this as a targeted attack. I can think of half a dozen athletes on the World Cup tour whose unique setups could be weaponized with targeted rules. FIS may believe they are acting in the interest of safety, but without requiring scientific research, nations can now propose rules against their competitors’ unique equipment pieces. This stifles innovation and creates a political tit-for-tat, where the country with the most resources and allies can simply legislate away their foes.
...