Examining the Alpine Skiing World Cup Landscape in Anna Fenninger's Absence
You have got to hate sports sometimes. That it can be so cruel as to take out its best, brightest, most eager and valiant before they even have a chance to compete. An unfunny joke masquerading as unfortunate accidents and injuries.
The news on the eve of the opening 2015-16 Alpine skiing race that the reigning, two-time overall World Cup winner Anna Fenninger suffered a season-ending injury counted among the worst of such jokes. Chiefly for the 26-year-old herself, but also for a competition robbed of a star contender.
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The subsequent first couple months of the season have indicated how a landscape absent of Fenninger is going to shape up heading toward the World Cup finals in March. In a schedule without an Olympics or world championships, some here are performing as expected, others surprisingly so.
The year off taken by the veteran Slovenian star Tina Maze, a chief rival of the Austrian throughout last season, has also naturally impacted the going prior around the turn of the year.
The unexpectedness of Fenninger missing out has added an extra edge to proceedings, however (Maze's break had been announced in May). The sudden removal of a probable prominent player in the quest for points has forced at least partial re-evaluations of the chances of both rivals and team-mates.
The Americans
It is somewhat misleading to label Fenninger, Maze and Lindsey Vonn as a "big three" in the hunt for the big World Cup globe.
The 2015 season was the first time they had occupied those positions together (and in that order ultimately). In part a consequence of the recently retired German contender Maria Hoefl-Riesch vacating the hunt. In part a result of fitness and form not previously coalescing together at the same time.
However, with that timing and the considerable overlap in ambitions between three of the sport's most successful female competitors of recent years, it was no surprise their paths to victory intertwined.
No Fenninger and no Maze this time opened the quest for the overall title and the individual discipline-point hunts that inform it for Vonn. As one of the sport's most consistent other performers, her fellow American Mikaela Shiffrin was a natural suggestion to be her likely nearest rival.
Initial results suggested the Stars and Stripes were indeed set to feature regularly and ultimately decisively at the top of leaderboards.
After failing to finish the Soelden, Austria, giant slalom, Vonn set her stall out by dominating on her favourite Lake Louise hunting ground in Canada (now 19 wins and counting). Buoyed by her dominant start in the downhill and super-G competitions, the 31-year-old then won a first GS in over two years in Are, Sweden.
Shiffrin, 20, had been similarly commanding in the season's first two slaloms on home snow in Aspen, Colorado. Winning by respective advantages of 3.07 and 2.65 seconds, notice was served of a skier only getting better in a specialty she had already repeatedly proved herself in.
Ascension into the ranks of legitimate overall contenders was also being enticingly hinted at with demonstrations of her versatility elsewhere.
A GS second place in Soelden was followed up in Aspen with a late DNF (did not finish) that denied Shiffrin recording a pace comparable to her slalom times the preceding days. A frustrating but encouraging season's beginning in an event she is still comparatively getting down pat.
Outside of her familiar technical participation, Shiffin then took a respectable 15th in her first World Cup super-G in Canada.
Vonn's victory in Sweden was unfortunately aided by a reminder of Alpine skiing's sometimes damaging unpredictability.
Unlike Fenninger, the knee injury Shiffrin suffered preparing that weekend would not definitively end her campaign. But it did all but kill what was shaping up as her first real overall challenge (defending her slalom crown is also a long shot now, albeit not mathematically over given the lack of a consistent winner in her absence).
Gut Steps In
Fenninger's bad luck, while helpful, should not have cheered any of her rivals on the competitive but largely amiable World Cup scene.
Close friend Lara Gut was especially disappointed by the news. The Swiss dedicated her giant slalom win in Lienz to Fenninger, well aware of the fallen champion's remarkable consistency winning the traditional year-ending race in Austria.
For Gut, it was the culmination of a Christmastide period in which the 24-year-old asserted herself as the most likely obstacle to Vonn's hopes of displacing Fenninger.
In late November she capitalised on Shiffrin's late slip-up in Aspen to take the GS—her first World Cup win or podium placing since January. Vonn's triumphant sweep in "Lake Lindsey" through to Are then combined with a mix bag of showings from Gut that felt more reminiscent of the 2015 season's bouts with inferiority and inconsistency.
A stunning pre-Christmas weekend in the French resorts of Val d'Isere and Courchevel—winning an Alpine combined and the downhill, second in GS—has suggested Gut can, however, be competitive with America's all-time World Cup wins leader. After Lienz and prior to a mixed weekend in another Austrian venue in Altenmarkt-Zauchensee (DNF in the downhill, second in the super-G, both won by Vonn), she was nevertheless being careful not good too ahead of herself.
Per the Federation Internationale de Ski website, Gut said:
"It's too early to think about the overall yet. After Lake Louise I was far behind Lindsey. It can change so quickly. Now I just want to stay focused on my skiing, to work every day hard to be fast and do what I can."
Heading into the weekend of January 16, Gut sits top of the overall leaderboard 38 points ahead of Vonn. She is in a solid position in the speed events and in taking top in the giant slalom standings has benefited from Fenninger's absence—the discipline being the Austrian's domain in recent years.
The advantage in the latter could be extended when Gut returns to Austria for the latest installment in Flachau. Another crucial test of her race-by-race mentality.
The Next Austrians Up
Standing in the way of Gut's hopes on Sunday—and her aspirations for at least a first individual discipline title since winning the super-G two years ago—will be Eva-Maria Brem.
Brem is one of the notable Austrians battling to ensure the standout Fenninger not competing does not reflect badly on their team. Currently in second place in the giant slalom standings (her eventual finishing place last year), with Maze also away she is in good shape to make the most of a couple less competitors.
Another of Fenninger's compatriots to excel so far this year is Cornelia Huetter.
The 23-year-old former Junior World Ski Championships bronze medalist is enjoying the best season of her fledgling career. A first win still eludes her, but the expectant Austrian fans and coaches should be pleased with her successive speed podium finishes (broken up only by a giant slalom DNF and less proficient technical skills letting her down in the combined).
Sitting second to Vonn in both the downhill and super-G—by 50 points in the former, 80 in the latter—Huetter's consistency bares a resemblance to that which Fenninger built her successful last two years on. Should she also replicate the older skier's knack of finding a few momentum-building late-season first places, more tangible success may await.
Huetter will be well aware things will likely only get tougher when Fenninger returns (assuming her injury has left no ill-effect). In the men's competition last year, Kjetil Jansrud made the most of fellow Norwegian Aksel Lund Svindal being unable to compete.
Producing some mightily impressive performances, he successfully won the downhill and super-G titles previously his compatriot's. Now that Svindal is back, wins are proving harder to come by for Jansrud.
Vonn, Shiffrin, Gut, Brem and Huetter will be keen to make the most of 2016. For varying reasons, they will know full well a fit-again Fenninger (not to mention a possibly re-motivated Maze) will make the world championships year of 2017 a whole lot trickier.
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