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SOCHI 2013 PSL/PGS

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PGS/PSL race hill in Rosa Kytor/Sochi

PSL cancelled 

The spring-like weather conditions this week in Sochi’s olympic ski resort Rosa Kytor were very challenging to organize the pre-olympic events in PGS and PSL. Ranging from rain, temperatures up to 18 °C, sunshine and warm foehn-winds I coud get an impression how quickly weather can change here and it seems that it is a pretty usual situation here in the caucasian mountains in the south of Russia. The black sea is only about 50 km away sending lots of humidity towards the mountains and makes a similar climate like for instance in Whistler/Cypress Hill area of the 2010 Olympic Games.

In yesterday’s PGS I was pretty disappointed to not get into finals and only taking the 21st spot fate qualifications. It was a fun course to ride and I really enjoyed the good hill which has got all different terrains. First run I was definitely too careful as I expected the slope to be more rough than it actually was. So even a quite good second couldn’t help to reach the top 16. The course crew did a good job and so the PGS race was still pretty good to ride and the finals looked nice. Watching the race I really wanted to go for finals today in PGS.

But the responsible guys from FIS and OC did not handle the situation with the difficult weather circumstances right. They missed to prepare the slope for PSL yesterday night and so they did it this morning. With these high temperatures it is impossible to get proper snow and slope quality for the race by doing these preparations only in the morning. So unfortunately the PSL today got cancelled because it was just too soft snow.

We have had too many badly organized races during the last years. Like today it was always the combination of difficult weather and poor organization. I really hope the responsible people from FIS and OC will learn from this so next year the Olympic races can be good here in Sochi. I want to win medals here in two beautiful races!