Overall World Cup Winner Marco Odermatt calls for reforms in the Ski World Cup

Overall World Cup winner Marco Odermatt demands a fundamental reform in the Ski World Cup. He would cancel the Alpine combination and parallel competitions.

In an interview with the Swiss “Blick”, Marco Odermatt, the winner of the opening race in Sölden, becomes clear: “For me it is clear: All the half-batch (inadequate, editor’s note) disciplines such as the station wagon and the parallel competition should be finally eliminated.”

His Suggestion: 10 times 4 competitions

For the Swiss, the Ski World Cup should only consist of the four core disciplines of downhill, super-G, giant slalom and slalom. In concrete terms, Odermatt proposes to drive exactly ten World Cups from each of these disciplines so that the chances of the overall World Cup for speed specialists and technicians are the same.

The sports show expert Felix Neureuther had repeatedly questioned the alpine combination in the past: “I don’t want to see athletes finish four or five seconds behind. It would have been better if it had been abolished.” In fact, there is no Alpine combination in the racing calendar this season. The parallel events are also hardly present, only in Lech/Zürs a race for women and men is planned in mid-November.

Lack of equal opportunities in the discussion

The two peripheral disciplines of combination and parallel event do not seem to be the big problem of the Ski World Cup anymore. The much longer lasting topic is the equal opportunity on the overall World Cup between technicians and speed specialists. There have been discussions here for years.

As early as 2015, former Super G World Champion Hannes Reichelt criticized the distribution of the races in the “Kleine Zeitung”: “If you get two speed balls and are not also good in giant slalom, you have no chance of the overall World Cup. On the other hand, if you win slalom and giant slalom, you are automatically the overall winner, which is unfair”