World Cup Opening in Soelden cancelled

Patrick Lang 24.10.2006 16:43 Uhr

The World Cup Opening from Soelden, in Austria, which has become one of the most popular races of the season,
has just been cancelled because of difficult weather conditions.

Too much rain
A giant slalom for women on Saturday and one for men on Sunday were scheduled this weekend on the Rettenbach glacier above Soelden. "We can't hold the races because it's too warm now and it rained too much last night," said the Chief of Press Ernst Lorenzi at 3.15 GMT at the end of a meeting beetwen the organizing committee and the FIS World Cup Directors Gunter Hujara and Atle Skaardal.
"You could believe to be in a warmy spring day when you walk outside."

Another attempt in November?
"Everything was fine until last weekend, the conditions were good enough to allow us to put together some nice snowboard events but it rained too much last night," Lorenzi added.
"It rained until the top of the mountain, at over 3000 meters, we never saw something similar. It's just too bad!"
Most of the teams were supposed to arrive in the coming days to launch the 41st World Cup season and the International Ski Federation (FIS) planned his usual "Forum Alpinum" which yearly attracted many reporters to Soelden.
It has not been announced if FIS was thinking about re-scheduling this event early November. The temperature would need to drop below zero Celcius to freeze the Rettenbach course hard enough for more races.

Levi to open World Cup season?
For the moment, the competitions planned in Levi, Finland, on Nov. 9/10 may well start the present season. A slalom and a giant slalom are scheduled in the norther part of Finland where it's fortunately colder than in the southern part where it's also very warm.