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Successful premiere for City Event in Munich

It was nonstop action at Munich's Olympic Park on Sunday evening for the FIS Audi Ski World Cup's first City Event. The top 16 male and female racers based on the overall World Cup Starting List were seen blazing down an 18-gate parallel slalom course in front of a massive crowd of 25'000. The two racers that prevailed heat after heat were Croatia's Ivica Kostelic for the men and Sweden's Maria Pietilae-Holmner for the ladies.

"What is good about this parallel event is you have to turn on your senses a lot," said Kostelic. "You don't ski alone like you usually do. You always have a skier, either you hear him or you see him. You have to be pretty sensitive about your other competitor. There could be some mental games if you allow yourself. But you have to stay focused on your skiing and just forget it."

Although most racers competing Sunday had never done anything similar to the Munich event, they all said it was fun and something they'd like to see continue as part of their race season.

"We cannot have 10 races like this, but we might have two per season," Kostelic said. "What we've seen today is a good commercial for skiing, a good formula for the future. It reminded me of a Middle Ages night tournament."

Munich's winners earned 100 points each in the World Cup overall standings. All of the finalists who skied eight runs said the event was tiring and that the parallel element added a whole new level of tactics.

"I think it was 100 percent racing," Goergl said. "It was really intense, fast runs, not a lot of breaks and really hard for your mind to be focused all the time, I think it was a great event, a great commercial for skiing and for the whole tour. I think it's exciting for the people, especially in a big city, bringing the whole sport to the people ... it's a good direction."

Contributed by fisalpine.com

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