2007-02-15

weaker in Åre

In case anyone missed this there are World Championships in Alpine Skiing underway in Åre, Jämtland, Sweden, hooray hooray and Sweden has had more than its share of success and medals yada-yada.

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old something, can I just add the observation that the rules are biased in favor of small countries like… Sweden. How come? Elementary, Mr. Watson. There is a cap on the number of participants per country.

This doesn’t bother us, for obvious reasons we couldn’t send more than a handful of top skiers in any discipline. But suppose a country like Austria has ten or fifteen world class skiers for the downhill competition. In a regular World Cup race all ten could take part. When there is a World Championship (or indeed in the case of the Olympics) only a few are allowed to start. Therefore, by definition, the field is weaker in Åre than in an average World Cup event.

So beside good timing, the home crowd and a bit of luck there are other reasons why Anja Pärson has her best week of this winter.
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