© Agence Zoom - Francis Bompard
Kandahar fogged out
The Kandahar, the last of the big World Cup downhill races before the Olympics, was cancelled yesterday because of heavy fog on the lower part of the course. After more than two hours of delay, FIS officials decided to cancel the race as a blanket of isolated fog refused to burn off. Teams arrived in Les Houches, five kilometres east of Chamonix, to find the course on the Verte piste, fog bound for the 9 a.m. course inspection. The sun began to burn it off leading up to the 11 a.m. start, but it settled back in and never dissipated.
Officials had no options for rescheduling due to travel and television conflicts. “This is done," said Guenter Hujara, the FIS race director for men's World Cup. "There is no chance to reschedule it because we have no more dates open. There is no better answer. We tried our best today."
Whilst very disappointing, this helps Austrian Michael Walchhofer's chances of defending his season title. Austrian Fritz Strobl and American Daron Rahlves will have a difficult time catching Walchofer, who leads the downhill standings with 498 points. Strobl has 441 points and Rahlves has 408.
This now leaves only technical races scheduled for the remainder of the World Cup season before the Finals March 15-19. The Kandaher would have been the 30th of 39 competitions on the men’s calendar. All the rest of them will take place in March, following the Olympic Winter Games. There will be a pair of giant slaloms in Yong Pyong, South Korea (March 4-5), a pair of slaloms in Shiga Kogen, Japan (March 10-11), and then the World Cup Finals in Are, Sweden. This also would have been the ninth of 10 downhills on the World Cup calendar, the next one being March 15 at the finals in Sweden. Unfortunately, a further downhill cannot be added to the schedule at finals, because there are already two races a day -- one men's and one women's.
