China and South Korea have produced world-class athletes in several winter sports, but alpine skiing events are notable exceptions.
As South Korea prepares to host the 2018 Winter Olympics, it is a situation the host country might be keen to change, but one former ski champion believes it is too late to groom any stars.
Two-time Canadian Olympian Ken Read, who won five World Cup races between 1975 and 1980, is familiar with the Asian scene in his role with the International Ski Federation.
Photo: Reuters
Read says nearly all world-class downhill and slalom skiers are born virtually with skis on their feet and that it takes at least a decade to hone the skills necessary to be internationally competitive, which is why the events continue to be dominated by Europeans and North Americans.
While gymnasts and divers can often quickly be taught the transfer skills needed to become top freestyle aerial skiers, the same does not apply to the alpine disciplines, he says.
“You can take gymnasts and divers and teach them to fly on skis. They pick it up quickly and, bingo, you have some of the best in the world,” Read said. “In alpine skiing, you need a [long] gestation period. Typically, the top skiers have been on skis since a very young age.”
So although China, which won two medals in freestyle aerials at last year’s Sochi Olympics, and South Korea have some good freestyle skiers, China currently has no one on the World Cup alpine ski circuit and South Korea has just one competitive slalom skier, Jung Dong-hyun.
“[South] Korea has a healthy ski community and they’ve been trying hard for a while to get some breadth [in various events],” said Read, who is the chairman of the FIS’s youth and children sub-committee. “Jung Dong-hyun is no slouch, but as far as I know, there’s nobody else from Korea at that level.”
China has dozens of ski resorts and up to 5 million skiers according to some estimates, but Read thinks the country has all but given up on alpine skiing, instead focusing on the freestyle events.
“From the outside looking in, it seems they have decided alpine skiing is not for them,” he said. “Money allocation helps and if the [China] ski federation doesn’t make it a priority, that makes it pretty hard.”
“There are no good juniors in China. They’re not producing anybody,” he added.
Read suspects that if Beijing wins the bid to host the 2022 Winter Games, then China might start devoting resources to alpine events.
However, he thinks it is already too late to develop anyone capable of challenging for a medal.
Japan has a strong tradition in winter sports, particularly ski jumping, but has collected only one alpine skiing Olympic medal — a silver in men’s slalom in 1956 — and currently has only one man and one woman on the World Cup alpine circuit.
Read says Japan’s development as an alpine skiing nation took a “massive hit” from the recession in the 1990s.
Skiing is surprisingly popular in warm-weather Australia, where national alpine program director Brad Wall agrees with Read that alpine skiers need to be nurtured from an early age.
“Alpine skiing is an extremely difficult sport for talent transfer from other sports later in an athlete’s career,” Wall said. “This model is extremely successful in aerial skiing for Australia, where many athletes have come from gymnastics backgrounds.”
Wall says Australia’s best chance for an alpine medal in 2018 is Greta Small, who finished in 15th in the combined event in Sochi at the age of 18. He expects her to have an even better chance in 2022.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later
RSS