16th Para-Ski World Championships, Austria 2017 - Day 5

Saturday, 11 March 8.30 am

The forecasters were right - a beautiful morning promising a busy day at the Target Area.  It was a glorious ride up the mountain this morning with all the judges and material to set up the target area ready for the first load at 9.00.

Yesterday evening we completed the 3rd round of Accuracy and the results have been posted:

Today we shall see if the current event leaders can hold onto their positions:  Sebastian Graser, Austria, the current Junior World Champion is not only leading the field in the Junior event, he is also leading the Individual Male event whilst Magdalena Schwertl, Austria is in the lead over the current Female World Champion Christiana Franz, Switzerland and Marco Valente, Italy is leading in the Masters event.  Russia 1 are in front in the Male Team event.

14.50 hrs:  I have been fortunate to be present and observe the results being checked by the Chief Judge and his Assistant and being confirmed and signed off.  They have now been posted on the Official Notice Board.

Congratulations to all the medal winners and our new World Champions - ( bearing in mind that the above could be subject to change following receipt of a protest within the next two hours.).

Congratulations should go particularly to Sebastian Graser, Junior World Champion, who until the 6th round was also leading in the Individual Male event by 1cm - he scored a 10 cm on that jump - and the Russian, Anton Filippov scored 2 and in the final round Sebastian got 5 and Anton 3.  Sebastian still walks away with the Silver Medal having been beaten by someone with many thousands of jumps more than him.  But congratulations also go to Anton for keeping his nerve and allowing his experience and consistency to pay off.

13.45 pm

Magdalena Schwertl, Austria, scored a dead centre '0' on her 6th round jump and so, regardless of the final round is secure as the new Para-Ski Female World Champion.

Soon we will know who all the 2017 World Champions in Para-Ski will be.  The judges then have  to check all the scores and post them to allow for any protests to be made.

13.10  pm

The final jumps of round 6 have been made and now the Chief Judge is checking the scores before the Final Individual jumpers are called for the deciding round.  Now the Females are on a 5 minute call.  

10.20 am

We are now waiting for one rejump to complete round 4.  I am working in the scoring section so I receive second hand information - there were several rejumps this morning, but now we only have this one to complete the round.

Yesterday also proved to be both a lucky and unlucky day for one competitor, Hielke Bootsma, the Netherlands.  On his third jump of the competition, his canopy broke several lines and though he continued to fly it and landed safely it is seriously damaged.  So lucky and unlucky as he will not be jumping in the competition any more. 

Arnold Hohenegger - Assistant to the Chief Judge	Aliya Ananina -  Judge

As soon as we got back to the hotel yesterday evening we had the Competitors' Meeting, as is a requirement at an FCE.  This gives both the discipline committee and the competitors an opportunity to discuss together how the discipline should or could develop.  Michael Egger, the committee chair, was there as were the other members of the committee, except for Ulf Tingnert who was working with the judges to clear the target area. 

Michael Egger welcomed everyone who attended and said how much he had enjoyed watching the competition that afternoon and warned he would be back next year!  After introducing the committee and his meeting agenda he made a dramatic 'distress call', pointing out the saddeningly decreasing number of both competitors and Nations in Para-Ski FCEs.  Ten years ago in 2007 there were a total of 67 male, 14 female and 12/4 (male/female) juniors from 13 Nations competing -  today there were 46 male, 10 female, 10/1 (male/female) juniors from 8 nations.  He asked for ideas to increase the number of participants - what needs to be done?  He also spoke about the World Cup Series which only had 2 events organised for 2018 (at the moment), the Austrian Nationals, and in the Czech Republic at the site of the next World Championships in 2019.  There was discussion from the floor, particularly from Slovakia, as to whether they could also host a competition next year.  Michael encouraged the representative to talk to all the competitors to gauge their reaction.   The good news on the horizon was the fact that at the CISM World Skiing Championships in 2018, for the first time, Para-Ski would be included as an event.  Hopefully this would lead to teams wishing and willing to participate in future FAI FCEs.

We then moved on to proposed rule changes, there had been none this year but because we state in our rules that for the Skiing part the FIS rules would be followed, we needed to add an exception to those rules as we did not penalise a skier who stopped on the course. Under FIS rules this is an automatic disqualification, whereas in Para-Ski (many more less experienced skiers) we allowed a competitor to continue completion of the course. There was discussion about removing or keeping the qualification run and it was decided it would stay.  Also Michael stated that he would look again at the Female Team number after the 2019 FCE, as reducing to 2 qualifying as a team had not brought the increased numbers of female competitors hoped for. The FCE in 2019 would be the last time if there was no increase.

Next item discussed was the Para-Ski name and its confusion within Press and Media with the ParaOlympics composition.  No conclusions were drawn as to whether a change was necessary.

A selection of pictures from Round 3, yesterday: