Tag: alpine skiing

olympic sports, winter sports

World Cup spring, USA vs. Maze: “I want that globe”

Posted on by Beau Dure

Slovenia’s Tina Maze has the overall World Cup Alpine title in hand, more than doubling her closest pursuer (2,254 points to 1,065 for Germany’s Maria Hoefl-Riesch. The only suspense remaining in the women’s standings: Can Maze complete an unheard-of sweep of the globes handed out in each discipline?

Not if the U.S. Ski Team can help it.

After her slalom win Sunday, Maze leads in every discipline except downhill, where she’s only one point behind the injured Lindsey Vonn.  If Maze remains upright in the World Cup final, she’ll take that one. She already has the giant slalom in hand. If FIS still gave a trophy for combined, she’d have that one, too.

Giant slalom is almost in Maze’s hands. She leads Julia Mancuso by 55 points. Mancuso has to make the podium to have a mathematical chance. If Mancuso wins the final, Maze needs a top-five. If she’s second, Maze needs a top-10.

Mikaela Shiffrin is impressed. (Photo by Mitchell Gunn/ESPA via USSA)
Mikaela Shiffrin is impressed. (Photo by Mitchell Gunn/ESPA via USSA)

Then we have the showdown. Tina Maze vs. Mikaela Shiffrin, the teen phenom who gave up her slalom lead on Sunday. Maze now leads by seven points. It’s not officially winner-take-all — if both skiers miss the top places, Shiffrin will need a gap of two or three places to claim the title — but it’s close.

The word from this morning:

Meanwhile, in men’s Alpine, the USA officially won’t be walking away without any crystal globes. Ted Ligety has clinched the giant slalom trophy. That’ll happen when your season results are five wins and two third-place finishes in seven races. He also won the world title, of course, and he’s third in the overall World Cup standings with a career-high 922 points (620 in giant slalom).

First place will come down to a final week showdown between defending champion Marcel Hirscher (Austria) and 2007/2009 champion Aksel Lund Svindal (Norway).

In cross-country skiing, Kikkan Randall clinched the sprint season title with a split-second win over dominant Norwegian Maret Bjorgen. Margin of victory: 0.07 seconds. Can’t wait to see the video on that one. Randall also picked up some distance points this season and stands third overall.

Andy Newell is second in the men’s sprint standings, too far back to win but in good shape to stay in the top three.

In ski jumping, the U.S. men aren’t in the mix, but Sarah Hendrickson is on her way to finished second in women’s.

Nordic combined finds the USA still in transition after the big run up to Vancouver. No Americans have been in the World Cup top 10 since.

Freestyle skiing‘s overall trophy hardly matters. Everyone’s specialized, with FIVE events per gender in the Games now with the 2010 addition of skicross and the 2014 additions of halfpipe and slopestyle. Top Americans:

  • Hannah Kearney, first, women’s moguls
  • Torin Yater-Wallace, first, men’s halfpipe
  • David Wise, first, men’s halfpipe
  • Keri Herman, first, women’s slopestyle
  • Emily Cook, second, women’s aerials
  • Maddie Bowman, second, women’s halfpipe
  • Patrick Deneen, third, men’s moguls
  • Heather McPhie, third, women’s moguls
  • Bradley Wilson, fourth, men’s aerials
  • Dylan Ferguson, fourth, men’s aerials
  • Eliza Outtrim, fourth, women’s moguls

And the World Championships just wrapped up in Oslo. U.S. notes:

  • Women’s halfpipe: Bowman didn’t start.
  • Men’s halfpipe: Wise and Yater-Wallace 1-2.
  • Women’s moguls: Need you ask? Hannah Kearney. She was also third in dual moguls.
  • Men’s moguls: No medals in the traditional event, but Deneen was third in duals.
  • Women’s slopestyle: Herman wasn’t there; Grete Eliassen took third.
  • Men’s slopestyle: Thomas Wallisch first; Nicholas Goepper third.
  • Men’s skicross: John Teller third

Still two more weekends on the World Cup circuit, though, so we’ll hold off on the medal projections for now. Safe to say the USA will be expecting some hardware in Sochi.

In snowboarding, the medal projections are already up. We’ll revisit after X Games Tignes in late March. But worth noting: Even though U.S. snowboarders erratically participate on the World Cup circuit, they lead the freestyle disciplines: Scotty Lago and Kelly Clark (halfpipe), Chas Guldemond and Jamie Anderson (slopestyle).

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olympic sports, soccer, winter sports

Monday Myriad, March 4: Nordic state of mind

Posted on by Beau Dure

Headlines from the week:

– Slovenia’s Tina Maze is having the best Alpine skiing World Cup season of all time.

– Norway’s Maret Bjoergen had one of the best Nordic World Championships of all time.

– Shaun White was back in action with another U.S. Open title.

– Milers Mary Cain and Will Leer stood out at the USA Indoor track and field championships.

– At the same meet, pole vaulter Jenn Suhr broke five meters and the indoor world record. The only other women’s pole vaulter to clear five meters is Russia’s Yelena Isinbayeva. Isinbayeva’s outdoor record: 5.06 meters. Suhr indoors: 5.02.

– Speedskaters Brittany Bowe and Brian Hansen won World Cup races for the first time.

The Storified version has a few more fun features:

http://storify.com/duresport/monday-myriad-march-4-storify-version

 

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olympic sports, winter sports

Alpine update: Maze sweeping, USA rotating

Posted on by Beau Dure

Today’s Alpine skiing news goes beyond what I can sum up on Twitter:

First, let’s talk about Tina Maze. Last season, she finished second to the dominant Lindsey Vonn, but she didn’t win a single race.

This year, she has won nine races. She has been on the podium 20 times, tying U.S. great Phil Mahre for second-most in a season behind Austria’s Hermann (Herminator) Maier, who had 22 in the 1999-2000 season.

In that season, Maier had 2,000 points. Maze broke that record today and is up to 2,024 points.

Here’s the scary part: The season isn’t over. We have seven more races.

The other headline for Maze today is that she became just the second woman to win a race in all five disciplines — downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom, and combined. She could actually win the season title in all five (though, technically, no globe is at stake in combined).

  • Giant slalom: Clinched it with two races left.
  • Combined: Clinched it. No races left.
  • Super-G: Almost clinched it. She’s first, with American Julia Mancuso chasing. Two races left: Sunday and in the World Cup final.
  • Downhill: She’s in second. But she’s only one point behind Vonn, who isn’t coming back in the next month. Others are in contention: Germany’s Maria Hoefl-Riesch and the USA’s Stacey Cook. One race left at the World Cup final.
  • Slalom: This one is the most challenging. She’s second, 33 points behind American teen phenom Mikaela Shiffrin. Two races left.

A lot of Americans are popping up in the standings, even after Vonn’s illness and catastrophic injury. Mancuso is a strong fourth overall, moving ahead of Vonn this weekend.

Today’s racing summed up the U.S. experience this season. Laurenne Ross finished second for her first World Cup podium. And Alice McKennis crashed, breaking her shinbone and requiring an airlift.

Maze vs. the Americans will be a fun story to follow in Sochi. Now, please, everyone stay healthy.

Links:
AP: Tina Maze breaks 2,000-point mark
Eurosport: Maze wins Garmisch downhill and breaks 2,000 points
World Cup standings

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olympic sports, winter sports

Monday Myriad, Feb. 18: Slalom and shoot

Posted on by Beau Dure

Headlines of the week:

– Ted Ligety won the giant slalom, his best event, for his third title at the Alpine skiing World Championships. Then 17-year-old Mikaela Shiffrin won the slalom. That’s four golds and a bronze for the USA in 10 individual events.

– Tim Burke took silver in the 20k individual event at biathlon’s World Championships, which were otherwise dominated by Norway (eight golds in 11 events — two individuals and two relays each for Tora Berger and Emil Hegle Svendsen).

– The Netherlands’ Sven Kramer won his sixth straight world allround speedskating title. Fellow Dutchperson Ireen Wust won her fourth overall, the last three in a row. Jonathan Kuck has the best U.S. finish, 13th.

– The MMA ladders are in the process of being updated after the weekend’s Bellator and UFC events, in which two bantamweight belts were defended.

A few links, tweets and videos on those stories and more:

http://storify.com/duresport/monday-myriad-feb-18-storify-edition

Upcoming:

– Feb. 20-24: Cycling (track), World Championships
– Feb. 21-March 3: Nordic skiing, World Championships
– Feb. 23: UFC 157: Rousey vs. Carmouche (women’s bantamweight title)

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olympic sports, rugby, soccer

Monday Myriad, Feb. 11: Ligety, Ligety

Posted on by Beau Dure

Headlines of the weekend:

– The USA’s Ted Ligety won his second gold medal at the Alpine skiing world championships, adding the supercombined to the super-G. Super.

– Norway’s Emil Hegle Svendsen won the sprint and held on to win the pursuit by a few millimeters over France’s Martin Fourcade at the biathlon World Championships. You just might see a highlight clip farther down in this post. The best U.S. finish so far: Lowell Bailey moved up from 32nd to take 13th in the men’s pursuit.

– England took their second win in two matches in rugby’s Six Nations Championship. So what if it was the lowest-scoring game in Six Nations history?

– The U.S. women’s tennis team fell out of the Fed Cup. Missing Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Sloane Stephens might have been a bit of a factor. A bit.

– Julia Clukey took second in women’s singles and the U.S. team took second in the team relay as the luge World Cup ran on U.S. ice at Lake Placid.

– Meryl Davis and Charlie White won the ice dance at figure skating’s Four Continents Championship, which drew a strong field in some events despite the upcoming World Championships being higher priority.

The TeamUSA.org wrapup has the rest of the weekend in Olympic sports. A few more things to peruse, Storify permitting:

http://storify.com/duresport/monday-myriad-feb-11-storify-version

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olympic sports, winter sports

Monday Myriad: U.S. athletes slide well

Posted on by Beau Dure

Our sleds are better than yours.

You may have heard Lolo Jones got second in her World Cup bobsled debut with driver Jazmine Fenlator, but U.S. success went farther than that. Elana Meyers and Tianna Madison, the latter also a track and field Olympian, took third.

The men weren’t bad, either. Steven Holcomb/Steve Langton and Cory Butner/Chuck Berkeley finished 1-2 in the World Cup two-man opener. Holcomb was second in the four-man, with Nick Cunningham taking third in just his third World Cup race.

The skeleton crew had a few top-fives: John Daly and Kyle Tress 4-5 in the men’s race; slider/weightlifter Katie Uhlaender fifth in the women’s race with the best time of the third run.

Figure skating

Gracie Gold at Skate Canada last month: 151.57 points, seventh place.

Gracie Gold at the Rostelecom Cup over the weekend: 175.03, second place. Just 2.16 out of first. That’s what skating insiders would call “an improvement.”

Agnes Zawadzki also had a bit of an improvement, posting a personal-best 166.61 for third place.

Caydee Denney and John Coughlin also reached the podium, finishing third in pairs. Ice dancers Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani were fourth.

The men didn’t do quite as well. Johnny Weir had a rough time in the short program, then withdrew. Richard Dornbush was sixth.

Alpine skiing

Well she’s … speedy and 17! Our U.S. ski-slalom queen!

Yes, she’s far too young to get that Stray Cats reference, but Mikaela Schifrin was on the World Cup podium this weekend, finishing third in a slalom somewhere near the North Pole. Ted Ligety was 13th in the men’s race.

Wrestling

Big win for Tervel Diagnev over Russia’s Magomedgadzhi Nurasulov, who scored less than 0.05 points for every letter in his name, at the New York Athletic Club Invitational. Austin Trotman also beat one of the invited Russians and was named outstanding wrestler of the meet.

Basketball

Ready for a World Cup that won’t be sullied by the Netherlands’ negativity? Basketball is moving its world championship to soccer’s off-years and rebranding it as a World Cup. Better than World Series, at least.

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olympic sports, winter sports

Monday Myriad: Ligety Ligety Ligety

Posted on by Beau Dure

Let’s rush out this wrapup before the power runs out:

Alpine skiing: The time it takes you to read this sentence is Ted Ligety’s margin of victory (2.75 seconds) in the season-opening World Cup giant slalom on the big glacier in Solden, Austria, the traditional opener of the World Cup season in which fans celebrate the first snows of the Alps, putting away for a moment their concerns about the state of the climate and the European economy, which continues to be plagued by crippling debt in a few countries while Germany, a traditional power in winter sports, ponders the fate of the Euro, which has never been fully supported in some portions of the British aristocracy, which was also concerned that Lindsey Vonn missed a gate and didn’t finish the opening women’s race, along with Julia Mancuso, whose mishap you can read about here.

Figure skating: Spain’s Javier Fernandez upset Canada’s Patrick Chan to win Skate Canada. Depending on your point of view, that’s either an inspiring first Grand Prix win for Spain or signs of trouble with one of Canada’s star athletes. American Ross Miner bounced back after a rough short program to finish fifth.

Better news for Canadian women: Kaetlyn Osmond edged Japan’s Akiko Suzuki by 1.29 points to win. Americans Gracie Gold and Caroline Zhang were seventh and ninth.

The U.S. pairs were the last two. The USA’s Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donahue were fifth in the ice dance, predictably won by Canadian greats Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.

But if you want to look ahead to the Big Ice Dance Throwdown and compare scores, Virtue/Moir won Skate Canada with 169.41; the USA’s Meryl Davis and Charlie White won Skate America with 176.28.

Short-track speedskating: J.R. Celski was second in the 1,500 meters and fourth in the 1,000, and the U.S. men finished third in the relay in an otherwise dreary World Cup weekend for American skaters in Montreal.

Bobsled/luge/skeleton: Wikipedia currently lists 17 current sliding tracks in the world, with two more planned. It’s about to be 16. The Torino 2006 track will be dismantled.

Oh, it was scheduled to host a World Cup luge stop in December? Too bad.

Shooting: Jason Parker won the World Cup Final in men’s three-position.

Beach volleyball: Jen Kessy and April Ross won in Thailand.

 

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mma, olympic sports, soccer, winter sports

Thursday: No fooling around here

Posted on by Beau Dure

Today’s headlines:

– Soccer: The U.S. women’s team beat Mexico 1-0. At least, we think that’s what happened. The snow made it a little hard to see. Can’t wait for U.S. Soccer to post the highlights. In the meantime, the Salt Lake Tribune story includes a photo gallery worth checking out. (U.S. Soccer match report)

– MMA: Kenny Florian took a comfortable third-round submission win to spoil Takanori Gomi’s long-awaited — probably too long, unfortunate — UFC debut in the main event at UFC Fight Night. Roy Nelson won the battle of big and tall against Stefan Struve, ducking under a punch from “The Skyscraper” and answering with a knockout shot. Florian and Nelson took the night’s submission and knockout bonuses, while Ross Pearson and Dennis Siver took the fight of the night honors. Jorge Rivera had the best overall performance of the night with a convincing win over Nate Quarry that didn’t last long into the second round.  (MMA Fighting Stances)

– Soccer: Not to judge a city’s politics from afar, but it looks like a one-week delay in a vote on the Houston Dynamo’s stadium deal has spawned a bit of petty sniping. (Houston Chronicle)

– Alpine skiing: You didn’t expect Bode Miller to make his mind about next season anytime soon, did you? (AP)

– Soccer: U.S. player Marcus Tracy expects to miss the rest of the club season in Denmark with a knee injury. (AP)

Today’s reads:

– Volleyball: Need to catch up with any of the 157 U.S. women’s players going to overseas club teams? They’re rounded up on one staggering roundup. (USA Volleyball – PDF)

– MMA: The toughest part of getting into the house on The Ultimate Fighter might be dealing with solitary confinement in a hotel before the first bout, according to this compelling blog entry from contestant Court McGee. (Sherdog)

– Soccer: Inside Minnesota Soccer compiled a comprehensive preview of the USSF Division II (shotgun marriage between USL and NASL) season, with one writer per team. Familiar names include Steve Ralston, Christian Gomez, Louis Crayton and Steve Cronin. Future MLS clubs Vancouver and Portland have kept a lot of players from year to year. Miami, which has Gomez and Abe Thompson, is trying to rival the MetroStars/Red Bulls for roster turnover. (Inside Minnesota Soccer)

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