Maze makes midseason coaching change
Defending overall champion Tina Maze, who racked up a record-breaking 2,414 points in the 2013 season but currently sits a distant sixth with a fraction as many points, wasted little time in the new year before firing her coach Walter Ronconi — new this season after Livio Magoni quit last spring for a position with the Italian women’s team — and replacing him with former Swiss women’s head coach Mauro Pini.
Ronconi, a former Italian technical coach who worked with Massimiliano Blardone, replaced Magoni, who departed after three years with Maze despite repeated reports to the media by Maze’s staff that Magoni would continue on into 2014. Magoni’s replacement lasted less than a year in the role. Tina Maze’s boyfriend, Andrea Massi, remains head coach of the team despite the recent shakeups.
Now Pini enters the mix, a coach who found great success when he worked privately with Lara Gut but who resigned under heavy pressure from his role as head women’s coach of the Swiss team in March 2012. Since leaving the Swiss team, Pini has worked as a television consultant for RSI.
Pini has been contracted to join Team to aMaze only through the end of the 2014 season.