World Cup Rewind: January, big, bad January

January marks the core of the World Cup season; The heart and soul.
    The names alone are magic: Wengen, Kitzbühel, Adelboden, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Chamonix, Schladming. What those names represent is what makes the World Cup the amazing annual journey it is. On the tour, January is a brutal run of classically difficult courses week after week after week. It makes or breaks a racer's season
    The set-up coming in has, as always, been interesting. Early season races get bumped around on the schedule. Newcomers make a mark. Veterans rise to challenges or fall to the wayside. Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, it is time to make the statement, make the stand, ski the ski.
    Aksel Lund Svindal and Marlies Schild have skied the best thus far, but neither is any walkaway title winner just yet. Not until they handle January.

JANUARY MARKS THE CORE of the World Cup season, the heart and soul.
   The names alone are magic: Wengen, Kitzbühel, Adelboden, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Chamonix, Schladming. What those names represent is what makes the World Cup the amazing annual journey it is. On the tour, January is a brutal run of classically difficult courses week after week after week. It makes or breaks a racer's season
    The set-up coming in has, as always, been interesting. Early season races get bumped around on the schedule. Newcomers make a mark. Veterans rise to challenges or fall to the wayside. Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, it is time to make the statement, make the stand, ski the ski.
    Aksel Lund Svindal and Marlies Schild have skied the best thus far, but neither is any walkaway title winner just yet. Not until they handle January.
    This is what we've all been waiting for. There seem to be others who have been looking forward to the upcoming stretch as well. Since Christmas, the podiums have been all Austria: nine of 12. Methinks the Oesterreich has awakened.
    The women's tour, in particular, has been Austrian dominated all season: 21 of 39 podium spots, more than 53 percent. The top four placings on the women's overall list are Austrian. But the U.S. team has two of the five non-Austrians in the top 10 in Lindsey Kildow and Julia Mancuso. They are in striking distance.
    The men's tour is destined to do some major shifting. Non-Austrians such as Bode Miller, Didier Cuche, Peter Fill and Marco Buechel have all been skiing out of their minds. The North Americans also have seen glimpses of greatness from Ted Ligety, Steven Nyman, John Kucera and Francois Bourque. In short, our hemisphere is in position to make a charge, but it won't be easy. It never is in January.
    These days, the tour is so strong, the skiers so good, a small mistake is magnified, spelling the difference between first and 15th. In the second of the men's downhills at Bormio, one second, a "one one-thousand" on the schoolyard, meant a difference of 82 points in World Cup standings. A half a second — which can't be counted on the schoolyard — was 60 points in back of the winner.
    A hundredth of a second can — and has this season — spelled the difference of 20 points between first and second place.
    When someone like, oh, say, Marlies Schild wins three of four pre-January slaloms by an average of more than three-quarters of a second, she should have a big standings lead. She is 108 points in front, which is less than comfortable. Kildow, with two wins and four podiums in the four downhills held, is another with a solid discipline lead. But all the other discipline leads could change with a single win. Now, in January, is when the strong push.
    Both the men and women have three downhills in January. The men have four slaloms in the month, four of 10 total. The women have two. The reverse is true in super G, where the women have three on tap for January and the men one. The men have already completed half of their GS season and have just Adelboden on the January schedule. The women have two GS's planned for the month. Combineds: three for the men, one for the women.
    These races, 23 of them, are likely to determine seasonal success.