Alpine skiing calendar for 2014-15 announced

IPC Alpine Skiing have today (6 November) announced the 2014-15 season calendar, which features eight World and Europa Cups around the world, ahead of the 2015 IPC Alpine Skiing World Championships in Panorama, Canada.

The full competition calendar can be found at IPC Alpine Skiing’s new-look website, launched to coincide with the start of the new season.

The Cup season, which follows on from the most successful Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, is set to begin from 15-16 December with a Europa Cup in Pitztal, Austria.

The first World Cup will then take place in La Molina, Spain, from 8-11 January with giant slalom and slalom races. This will be followed by editions in Tignes, France before the World Cup Finals take place in St Moritz, Switzerland from 2-5 February.

In total there will be four Europa Cups in Pitztal, and the resorts of Kuhtai and Matrei also in Austria with the final event taking place in Tarvisio, Italy, from 22-24 February ahead of the World Championships.

In 2013-14, France’s five-time world champion Marie Bochet won the women’s overall World Cup in the standing classification before going on to win four gold medals at Sochi 2014. German Anna Schaffelhuber triumphed in all her events to take home five Paralympic titles following her overall World Cup victory in the women’s sitting.

America’s Danelle Umstead and husband guide Rob meanwhile won the overall World Cup for visually impaired women.

The men’s World Cup saw a close match between world champions Russian Alexy Bugaev and Austria’s Markus Salcher throughout the season. Bugaev went on to win the overall men’s standing World Cup crown as well as double gold in slalom and super-combined in Sochi, matched by Salcher in the super-G and downhill.

In the men’s sitting World Cup, the USA’s Tyler Walker, Austrian Roman Rabl and Japan’s Taiki Morii made up the top three with Rabl and Morii going onto medal at Sochi.

The men’s visually impaired World Cup belonged to Italy’s Alessandro Daldoss and guide Luca Negrini.

Winners of the overall Europa Cups for each classification last season included Rabl, Salcher, Schaffelhuber, and Great Britain’s Jade Etherington, who announced her retirement on 5 November.

Germany’s Andrea Rothfuss also won the women’s standing Europa Cup and Pole Maciej Krezel took the men’s visually impaired title.

The 2014-15 season will also feature a series of lower-level IPCAS competitions in the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Canada, Austria and America and the first ever IPC Alpine Skiing competition in Serbia. The Japanese resort of Nagano Hakuba will host an Asian Cup, whilst the season will start and finish with youth development races in the Netherlands and Spain.

The 2015 IPC Alpine Skiing World Championships will take place in Panorama from 1-10 March and will feature around 230 athletes from 30 countries for the biggest gathering of skiers since Sochi 2014.