Lech/Zuers status update from OC president Patrick Ortlieb

The parallel events in international alpine ski racing have earned mixed reviews from racers and fans alike. Woman against woman, man against man, these individual battles provide intense excitement – and sometimes great frustration.

U.S. Ski Team member Paula Moltzan has excited the skiing world with some of her best race results in individual parallel events, including her second-place finish and first World Cup podium at the Lech/Zuers parallel event last year. However, while some parallel races seem fair, other competitions have received harsh critique due to unequal race conditions. During last winter’s FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Cortina d’Ampezzo, the visible difference in the speed obtained in the two parallel race courses – paired with the race rules – in some cases affected which racers advanced in that World Championship competition.

Moltzan still impressed in the parallel event during the World Championships, finishing fourth. In a previous interview, she told Ski Racing Media: “You just have to make the best of it and when you get the short end of the stick you just have to push on through and try your hardest because that’s what the other person is doing.”

Looking ahead to this weekend, president of the Lech/Zuers organizing committee Patrick Ortlieb provided Ski Racing a status update for the upcoming races and shared his thoughts on how to create good parallel events.

Race hill ready

As seen in past World Cup seasons, creating even conditions in the two courses of a parallel event can sometimes be challenging. But it can be done. One parallel event that received positive feedback during the 2020-21 season, was last November’s World Cup parallel event at the then new venue in Lech/Zuers, Austria. The second edition is coming up in a few days, with the women’s race on Nov. 13 and the men’s race the following day.

In a recent telephone interview, the president of the Lech/Zuers organizing committee, Ortlieb, says he is confident that the race hill will be ready for the event. Reservoirs of snow from last winter are used for the preparation of this year’s race surface. In addition, comes natural snow, which started falling right before our early-November interview, and snowmaking.

On Nov. 4, the International Ski Federation (FIS) conducted its snow control, always required prior to a World Cup competition. The Lech/Zuers race hill snow conditions were approved by FIS, which thereby gave the green light for the upcoming weekend’s World Cup event.

The Lech/Zuers race arena was finished shortly before the 2020-21 season. Ortlieb explains that the hill had been planned for some time – as a training hill for local children and junior racers. The idea of bringing a World Cup event back to the region sped up the process plus resulted in monetary support from private sources for the building project. With the new hill already in the planning, everything could be perfectly built for the parallel event – including an optimal course profile, snowmaking equipment and floodlights.

“It was not cheap, but it’s OK,” Ortlieb says, pointing to the end result. The hill is now in use as much as six months of the year and also benefits young local skiers, he explains.

Surface issues

Ortlieb, the downhill champion in both the 1992 Olympics and the 1996 World Championships, is also the CEO of the Austrian Ski Federation group responsible for all financial issues and alpine sport. He offers an explanation for what created the widely criticized race surface during the Cortina parallel events: The preparation of the slope was not the same all across the race hill. The same hill had been used for various other race disciplines in the days before the individual parallel events, which resulted in the snow having received various degrees of work and water in preparation for the races prior to the parallel events.

“In Cortina this was a man-made problem,” Ortlieb says.

To avoid the same situation, the race schedule for the 2025 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Salbaach has been shifted compared to the championships in 2021. The 2025 championships will start with the parallel events and the organizers can prepare the race hill perfectly for these opening competitions, according to Ortlieb.

Racers ready?

Not all top racers signal that they prioritize the parallel events, however. Several Swiss national team stars said to Swiss media in October that they do not wish to start in the upcoming World Cup parallel events in Lech/Zuers. Skepticism towards the parallel format, the lack of change in the FIS race rules after last year’s World Championships, and wanting to prove a point to FIS are among their reasons.

Ortlieb is not worried. “I know for sure they will come,” he says in regards to the Swiss national team. “Eight Swiss men and eight Swiss women are on the start list.”

But, what about, for example, Marco Odermatt, the Swiss winner of the season-opening World Cup GS in Soelden? Will he start in this parallel event?

“If Odermatt wants to win overall, he must come. But it is his decision,” Ortlieb says.

He points to the tight final results in the overall World Cup last year, where Alexis Pinturault of France won by only 167 points ahead of Odermatt. The women’s overall cup was an even closer race with Petra Vlhova of Slovakia winning only 160 points ahead of Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami. Both winners of the 2020-21 overall World Cup titles also won last year’s Lech/Zuers parallel event.

Ortlieb also reveals part of a recent talk with Swiss Ski President Urs Lehmann about the Lech/Zuers parallel event:

“I told him Austria would be happy if the Swiss guys don’t come. Austria and Switzerland are competing against each other in the Nations Cup. It gives more points and more prize money for the Austrians,” Ortlieb chuckles.

UPDATE: In the hours after this article published, it was announced that Odermatt is not competing in Lech/Zuers; he is instead heading to North America. According to the Swiss Ski Federation, their contestants in Lech/Zuers will be six men and eight women.