Palander wins controversial Park City slalom.

Finland’s Kalle Palander picked up where he left off last season by retaining the winning the leadership in the World Cup slalom standings. The 1999 World Champion from Tornio, in the Northern part of Finland, dominated the first slalom of the season in Park city, Utah. The 26-year-old skier put together two very aggressive runs to win his fifth World Cup slalom here, but everything else was in astute of confusion after the race because of a series of protests filed by most of the trainers against the result of an Austrian competitor. The award ceremony was delayed by half an hour because of the controversy.

Ten national ski teams protested against a re-run by Rainer Schoenfelder in the first run. Schoenfelder skied out in the opening leg and was awarded a re-run when he claimed afterwards a course worker, laying on the course during his run, distracted him on his way down the course.
Schoenfelder tied Palander for first place after the re-run with a time of 47.24 seconds.

Schoenfelder finished the race unofficially in second place, before the protests. Then Gunter Hujara, FIS World Cup Race Director, met with the FIS jury to interview other course workers and review videotape of the race.
“We decided to disallow Schoenfelder<provisional re-run because he didn’t follow the rules” said Hujara. “A racer must stop immediately after the interference and then make a protest.”
“ Schoenfelder skied through several more gates before skiing out of the course. Unfortunately, the story we got from him during the first run was not what we discovered in the post race review, added Hujara”.

“I assumed he had skied out in the first run and I was surprised and upset when I saw him and the start for the second run” said Palander at the press conference, “but I just focused on the run because I believed he would be taken out”.

Manfred Pranger from Austria was moved up to second place after Schoenfelder was taken out of the standings followed by Italy’s Giorgio Rocca.

Austria’s downhill World Champion Michael Walchhofer, who clocked the 31st best time in the first run, was re-qualified to enter the 2nd run because of the uncertainty of Schoenfelder’s situation. Apparently he was so motivated to receive this unexpected second chance that he set the best time in the final run. He moved up to 12th position – his best for a long time.

Other favorites such as World Champion Ivica Kostelic and Bode Miller failed to finish the first run. It’s the first DNF for Ivica since his victory in Aspen, in November 2001!
Miller, the winner in Saturday’s giant slalom, only ended three slaloms last season. His last victory in that specialty goes back to January 2002 in Schladming, Austria. He lost his place in the international slalom start list. He is now in 16th position before the next slalom from Madonna di Campiglio. Japan’s Akira Sasaki, 12th in the race, is now 15th in the slalom start-list.
Yet Miller clearly remains in the lead in the Overall World Cup standings before the next events in Canada’s Lake Louise.
His teammate Tom Rothrock, achieving his best performance on the World Cup tour, ended at a superb 8th place.

Palander, an excellent 5th in giant slalom on Saturday, celebrated his best season start ever in the US. A few years ago, when the competitors started to use shorter skis, Kalle struggled and was not able to confirm his triumph from Vail for a couple of season. Two years ago, he was finally able to find back his way among the top-10 in being 4th in Adelboden. Then finally he reached his first podium in Kranjska Gora last January before beating all his rivals in Kitzbühel.

He was as glad as surprised by his triumph. “I made a big mistake on the upper part of the second run” he said “I didn’t feel so well this morning during warm-up, so to win the race is fantastic. I feel great and this season will be very exciting”.
His flew home to rest and train before his next races, the giant slalom at Val d’Isère and the slalom in Madonna di Campiglio.
Another slalom World Champion, Austria’s Mario Matt, also seems able to move up in the standings this season. The 2001 gold medal winner in St Anton, seriously injured himself at a knee before last season. He came back in January to end 14th in Kranjska Gora, but he didn’t finish the Worlds in St Moritz. A four-time winner in demanding events as Kitzbühel, Schladming or Madonna di Campiglio in past years, Matt has the talent to fight again for victories in coming months.

Eric Moffit