Speaking of alpine - is it true the Olympic combined may be on the chopping block because skiers are so highly specialized now that they don't care to do both? Slalom and downhill I mean. (Apologies, I'm a bit out of the loop.)[/quote]Tricycle Rider said:[quote="Gigs_98":2ez2jq7r]I really hope the weather in pyeongchang finally gets better. Only one alpine skiing event has taken place so far, and all ski jumping and nordic combined even have been heavily influenced by the wind
Yeah, unfortunately that's true. Over the last decade basically all male alpine combined specialists have retired. Kostelic, Miller, Raich, Zurbriggen, a few other decent skiers for this discipline like walchhofer, schönfelder,... are also all gone and guys like ligety and svindal are still skiing but have specialized. The only one who still cares for combineds outside of major events is alexis pinturault but he despite caring for the discipline isn't very good at it. Hirscher basically only participates at combineds at major events and the only three times he did that he always beat pinturault.
It's kind of logical they don't want to make events nobody cares about. The problem is that the women have to pay for the men not caring about the discipline, since on the womens side there are still more then enough skiers who would be great in combineds. Shiffrin, holdener, gisin to only name a few.
Maybe you could add ester ledecka to the list however she would have to make the slalom with her snowboard.