PRAGELATO - THE SEVENTH VENUE

Everything's ready for the “Big Show”

27 february 2008. - As every first time, also this will be remembered forever. After nine years of official FIS competitions, the fifth alpine discipline will enter, with its seventh season's venue, one of the most beautiful sport sites, the Olimpic Ski Jumping. The carvers will be challenged by the steep and narrow track of the outrun. This will be a first time also for the FIS, that has never been able to link two such different disciplines. The show is assured, as this is also one of the last competitions of this season and the battle for the crystal cup may be decided here.

The official course setter, Mauro Robustelli, will design a track with 10 turns, each made of 3 buoys, set on a horizontal line. The outer red buoy provides 5 points, the mitter yellow one 4 points and the inner blue buoy provides 3 points. The result is given by the race time/buoypoints. It is so a quite tactical competition, as the carvers may decide whether to collect as much points as possible, but with a higher race time, or to keep the time low.

These are the basic rules of the Carving Cup. Italy, since ever, provides top athletes, as Gianluca Grigoletto, last year's cup winner - but this year only Roberto Boselli has some possibilities to climb on the top step of the podium. The swiss René Stössel and Ivan Eggenberger are leading this year…but nothing is decided yet. In the female ranking things seem already fixed. With 5 victories in 6 races Alessandra Merlin is leading with a consistent advantage on the swiss Melanie Bürgener.

About 10 the nations are participating, aside the traditional alpine nations, also Japan, Argentina, Australia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Ucraina. The programm for Pragelato schedules the two qualifying runs for Saturday and the semifinal (10 women and 30 men) and final (5 women and 10 men) for Sunday morning. The race will be broadcasted on SkySport3 on Tuesday evening and repeated all over the week.