QA with Atle Skaardal, FIS race director of women's alpine World Cup

Q&A with Atle Skaardal, FIS race director of women’s alpine World CupAtle Skaardal of Norway was named the FIS race director for the women’s World Cup last spring, taking over for the widely respected Kurt Hoch, who was at the helm of the tour for 14 years. Now Skaardal, 39, will have the enormous task of overseeing 37 races in 13 countries. A World Cup racer from 1983 to 1997, Skaardal won seven World Cups (six downhills and one super G), including Kitzbuehel. Skaardal won the super G title in 1995-96, and he won the World Championships title in that event twice in a row (1996 and 1997). He coached the Norwegian team for the last five years. Ski Racing’s senior editor Nathaniel Vinton interviewed him at the Geneva airport this fall.

SR: Most men’s World Cup slaloms are injected with water to make them icier. Will you do this for the women?
AS: For me there’s no rule that says I’m not going to do it on the ladies side, because we have seen enough races with icy courses and the ladies are skiing perfectly.

SR: Will the women’s World Cup continue to visit places such as the Czech Republic and Croatia?
AS: We are the World Cup, so we should be presenting it to the whole world as long as the interest is there. Everybody involved in the ski world should welcome that and accept that. It shouldn’t be just in middle Europe.

SR: The top women sometimes complain that the women’s courses aren’t difficult enough.
AS: In my opinion, race tracks should be prepared for the fastest skiers. For them it should be possible to ski everything without braking. I think the objective is to ski as fast as possible from the top of the mountain down to the valley.

SR: What are your goals for the World Cup?
AS: To keep or develop the interest in ladies ski racing, and try to continue what Kurt Hoch did before me. I think he looked out for the safety of the athletes. … He organized the race courses so that they could race with no doubts in their mind that it was safe.

SR: This summer you inspected all the World Cup sites. What did that involve.
AS: I also went to Vancouver for the Olympics 2010 already. I’ve also been to Are, not only because of the Finals, but the World Championships in 2007. It involves going through everything, the course, to see what’s possible, where we can have the different disciplines, the jumps, discussing safety, everything around the organization, slip crews, start times, transportation, accommodation for the teams.

SR: What were you looking at in Vancouver?
AS: We went up to Whistler/Blackcomb to see it. We have been discussing the men’s track and the ladies track. The finish venue. I would say it’s about 100 meters higher up that the World Cup finish area. It’s a good place, but they need to separate finish venues for ladies and men. The main goal with that is the weather problems we can run into on the West Coast. Maybe it’s necessary to do two training runs at the same time on the same day.

SR: What has been surprising to you since you started this job?
AS: It’s interesting for me to learn how many different interests there are around a ski race that I never thought about before. Everybody from organizers, rightsholders, TV rightsholders, the FIS. There are so many people involved in a ski race.

SR: There has been a lot of talk about changing the World Cup calendar. What do you want to see happen?
AS: Again, it’s different interests. The equipment suppliers think its maybe too many, some organizers think there should be twice as many races because a lot of them are not in the calendar. Maybe some of the specialists, skiing only slalom or GS, think there should be more races, nine or 10 a year. So there are as many opinions about that as people.

The first three questions and answers in this interview come from the current print edition of Ski Racing magazine, which is published 15 times a year and offers different material from what you see here at www.skiracing.com. While www.skiracing.com remains the No. 1 site for ski competition news, the magazine is full of feature stories, exciting photography and the famous Waxroom. Subscribe here today.