Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany – After a four-year hiatus due to weather cancellation in Val d’Isere in 2009, the Nations’ Team Event will be staged at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Garmisch on Wednesday for the third time since its introduction in Bormio, Italy in 2005.n“We look forward to the third edition of the Nations Team Event. I hope everyone will see for themselves that the Nations’ Team Event (NTE) is one of the most important events for the future. We have seen in disciplines like Cross-Country Skiing and Ski Jumping that the team events are the most-loved events for the fans,” commented FIS President Gian Franco Kasper and added: “After a successful event here at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, we hope that the NTE will not just be part of the FIS World Championships and World Cup but also on the program of the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi 2014.”
Wednesday’s competition will be carried out in the parallel format that was piloted at the Audi FIS Ski World Cup Finals 2010. Each team races down Garmisch’s Kandahar slope with two men and two women in each heat, selected from a squad of up to six athletes. Set up in bracket style, the top 16 nations are ranked similar to the NCAA’s March Madness. Total team sizes are set at a max of six racers, with at least two competitors from each gender starting each heat.
The best ranked nation will receive bib number 1 and the lowest ranked nation bib number 16. If any given heat is not complete with two teams, e.g. the 15th and 16th ranked nations are not at the start, the participating nation present will automatically be qualified for the next round.
The result of each heat between the nations will be determined by points. A win will score one point for the nation. In case of a tie, both nations get one point. In case of a tie after completing the four runs (2:2), the nation with the best individual run time will win.
If both competitors fall, the first competitor to reach the finish successfully will be the winner. If both competitors do not finish, the competitor who successfully skied the furthest distance will be the winner. At the end of the day, there will be two teams gunning for victory and two teams fighting for third.
There will be 11 nations participating: Austria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA. The athletes competing include medalists from the speed events led by world champion Anna Fenninger, together with Sweden’s Anja Paerson and Julia Mancuso of the USA. Joining them will be contenders for the technical titles including Romed Baumann, Benjamin Raich, Philip Schörghofer, Marlies Schild (all AUT), Michael Janyk (CAN), Tessa Worley, Thomas Fanara, Cyprien Richard (all FRA), Felix Neutreuther (GER), Massimiliano Blardone (ITA), Marc Berthod, (both SUI), Bode Miller, Ted Ligety (both USA) and Maria Pietilä-Holmner (SWE), among others.
“We are going ahead with the Nations’ Team Event precisely according to the plan. The hill is in good shape and we have been busy with the event build up at Kandahar all morning long,” stated Atle Skaardal, FIS Chief Race Director for the women.
Günter Hujara, FIS Chief Race Director for the men, noted, “The base preparation on the race courses has been excellent. With the temperatures below freezing during the past nights and additional cold nights forecast for the next several days, we expect to see an excellent Nations’ Team Event and great giant slalom races at Kandahar. The same goes for the slaloms at Gudiberg.”
The NTE parallel format was developed by an expert group of the FIS Alpine Executive Board in response to feedback collected from various stakeholders, including the National Ski Associations, teams, athletes, marketing agencies and the media, and the event has received a very enthusiastic response. Many nations have already earned a place on the podium in the previous editions of the Nations Team Event and the title of FIS World Champion team will be hotly contested in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Wednesday.
In addition to Miller, Mancuso and Ligety, fellow Olympian Sarah Schleper will represent the U.S. Ski Team in Wednesday’s competition. Miller, Mancuso and Ligety have 10 World Championship medals between them and Ligety is the reigning Audi FIS Alpine World Cup giant slalom champion. Megan McJames and Tim Jitloff will also be on the roster. World Champs medals and 100,000 Swiss Francs are on the line with the winning team earning 50,000 Francs.
“The team event should be fun,” said Ligety. “With Julia, Sarah, Bode and I – I think we have a good chance and GS is my go-to event right now, plus the dual format is a lot of fun to compete in. This is a pretty sweet team, but we’ll all have to lean on each other to move on.”
“It’s a parallel race, so you have to go really hard out of the start and generate speed on the flat part of the course if you want to be fast,” said U.S. Ski Team men’s Head Coach, Sasha Rearick. “It will be interesting to see who the other countries enter. We’ll see how we stack up after we execute our best skiing.”
Individual medal action returns Thursday at the World Championships with women’s giant slalom.