J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by AB

There will be a lot more Brits in Meribel up until 11th April. The British Senior/Junior/Children's champs are from 28th Mar to 11th Apr. There will be several hundred families all with the best of British talent racing mainly in Meribel but with some races in Motterat and Corchevel. There were several of the French World cup team competing last year so it is always worth a watch.
Still think Meribel is best suited as it is in the middle of the 3 valleys, but it's not cheap!!!

Hi StellaRew,
The trains are pretty regular, but you may have to change a couple of times depending on which service you use. You will also have to get a bus/taxi from Salzburg airport to the train station.
It might be best to catch the bus to Zell. It leaves directly from the airport and runs about 4 times a day. It's the number 260 & only costs about 11 euros each way.
My son just used it today with no problems. There might be a wait at the airport for your bus depending on your flight arrival time.
Zell is a great place for your first ski holiday. Very pretty, lots of good ski schools and easy beginner slopes. Lots of good apres ski too.
Enjoy it, you'll probably get hooked!!

RossF - It was Ed's first ever World Cup race. It was the longest of all DH's by about 30 secs. He spent almost 18 months out with injury only coming back 1/2 way through last season.
You try skiing that course at around 80mph! Respect to him. He will get better. He is only 22 which is still young for a WC downhiller, especially British. That course is only run once per year as are most WC Downhills. They all have to be learned and it takes many years to do so. Look at the average age of the top WC Downhillers. About 30+
Give him a chance please.

I thought Ski Sunday much better than last year, showing more of the racing. Good to see that they interviewed Ed Drake before his run and did show a little of it too.
The coverage is still way behind that of Eurosport though. All races live.

The resort reviews etc are now supposedly in another part of the programme at another time which is fine by me.
Remember that it is put on air during the Sunday sport programme so showing the racing rather than GB and his mate on the snowboard playing around would seem logical to me.
The reason they changed back more towards the old style is because so many people complained of the lack of racing!

Skiing is on Eurosport virtually every weekend in the morning.
It is also repeated in the evening throughout the week.
As we are now in the height of the World Cup season there are ladies and mens races every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was the Wengen Lauberhorn Downhill this weekend. Absolute classic race.The longest of them all.
Do not miss next week as it's the Kitzbuhel Hannenkahn. Only the bravest ski down that Downhill! 90MPH plus gradients of up to 85%!

If you go to the FIS website then there is the complete programme of all World Cup races which are all televised by Eurosport.
My Sky + box is almost full with this season already! Just gonna watch this mornings action now. :-)

Thanks for asking caron-a.
TJ is injured at the moment, not too badly. He tore the meniscus in his right knee in the middle of Dec. Had some keyhole surgery, was on crutches over christmas, but is now back training in the gym and flies back out to Austria on 22nd.
Everything was going great until the crash. He had already done 1 Europa cup Super g. He was going to leave to do 2 Europa cup Downhills later that afternoon when he crashed in training!
Just 3 days before he had trained Super G with the Austrian World Cup speed team. Klaus Kroell, Hannes Riechelt, Cristoph Grubber, etc; only the Herminator and Walchopher weren't there. He was only 1.8 secs behind Kroell who was the fastest, and most of that was on the flat gliding sections. His split times on the technical sections were almost as quick. So he was going well.
He should hopefully start racing by the start of Feb, go on to do the World Junior champs in March and finish off the season with the Brits in April.
Will have about 25 other FIS races in between.
He's aiming for a top 10 at the World Juniors and to stay in the top 15 in the world for his age in the speed events.

Yep ski sunday does start this weekend. Probably from the mens Downhill at Wengen. they are supposed to be showing more racing than last season which was pretty dire in that respect.
It's a pity that the first programme comes on when the World Cup season is half over. They missed some great racing so far!!! Why start it so late?
Think it also finsihes before the World Cup finals in March as well.

Ch4 World Cup skiing programme on sundays and all the other snow related programmes (snowbaording, cross country etc) through the week were axed before the season began as CH4 had to cut £2M off their sports budget. Skiing cost nearly £1m so was first to go even though the viewing figures were good. It also showed the British ski champs at the end of the season to wind the series up. A chance to see all the up and coming British talent.
Yes we do have some. Our new young crop are some of the best in the world for their age. Some are well inside the top 20 and the best we've ever had.

2 of them will be making their World Cup debut at Wengen this weekend. So Good luck to Dougie Crawford in the Super Combined and Ed Drake in the Downhill. Hopefully Ski Sunday will show them, especially as Graham Bell knows them both very well.

If you do want to watch all the World cup races, live and in full then there is only 1 channel to watch - British Eurosport.

Hothouse productions (who made CH4 ski programme) are apparently talking to ITV to get on air on ITV4 hopefully very soon.

Enjoy whatever you watch.

AB