Patrick Biggs' Blog

An interesting course set by Croatian coach Ante Kostelic had heads turning on the slopes monday. Ante has been known for pushing the boundaries of slalom sets for years, including his horizontal haipin at the 2006 Torino Olympics and his extended flush that took out a third of the field in Levi 2008. In Alta Badia this week he set two rather unusual combos including an offset delay and an in-to hairpin (these are not legal in the rule book, but because they can be considered a delay gate with the two poles close together, it flies). The tricky combos claimed quite a few victims, including top skiers Hargin and Matt who got disoriented and missed a gate. I took special care to spend the full 45 minute inspection memorizing this course to make sure I didn’t repeat a mistake i made last year in Wengen. A sketch below shows some of the combos described above.