First day of PSL action in Piancavallo in the books
Mar 12, 2022·Alpine Snowboard
The first of back-to-back competitions scheduled for this weekend in Piancavallo (ITA) went down in extraordinary fashion as Marc Hofer led the 1-2 punch for the Italian team for his maiden World Cup win in the men’s event, while Julie Zogg (SUI) and Tsubaki Miki (JPN) finished the women’s competition in ex aequo first place after an extremely thrilling big final matchup.
While extremely rare, it wasn’t the first time that we saw a tie for the first place at the FIS Snowboard Alpine World Cup tour. Back in 2020 Benjamin Karl and Marco Felicatti wrote history with their first ever tie for top spot in a parallel World Cup event. Now, two years later Zogg and Tsubaki repeated this extraordinary achievement with the first ever tie over in the women’s competition.
On their way to the big final both Zogg and Miki came through some exciting matchups with the most exciting ones coming right before in the semi finals. There, Zogg was lined up against her biggest rival in the PSL ranking Daniela Ulbing, while Miki raced against Ramona Theresia Hofmeister (GER).
After winning their heats, Zogg and Miki met in the big final, which turned out to be one of the closest battles on the World Cup tour we’ve seen in a long time. Despite a slight advantage for Zogg in the upper part of the course, Miki was able to find the optimal line and catch the Swiss rider as the duo crossed the finished line with exact the same time, meaning that that Saturday’s competition would see not just one winner, but two.
It was the first World Cup victory for 18-year-old Miki, and with her second top-3 finish in parallel slalom in 2021/22, the Japanese rider has now moved into second spot in the ranking, with just one more parallel slalom competition left in the season.
In the same time Zogg snagged her second PSL victory of the campaign, as she maintained her lead in the standing and with 29 points advantage ahead of the season grand finale in Berchtesgaden, the Swiss veteran is looking comfortable on her way to claim yet another parallel slalom World Cup crystal globe.
Third place on the day went to Ramona Theresia Hofmeister (GER), who came victorious against Daniela Ulbing in the small final matchup.
In the overall parallel standing Daniela Ulbing leads the way with 432 points, while Zogg now moved into second place with 420 points. Hofmeister dropped into third place with 397 points.
Things were equally exciting over on the men’s side of competition, with the Italian Snowboard Team finally showing the performance they used to deliver day-in and day-out in the last two seasons, putting as many as 6 riders into final top-16.
And while everyone would expect the likes of Roland Fischnaller or Edwin Coratti to lead the charge for the home team, it was Marc Hofer, who came with an unexpected performance as he stormed to his maiden World Cup victory.
On his way to victory, Hofer came victorious against some of the most decorated athletes in the games, first winning against Fischnaller and then beating the Olympic champion Benjamin Karl. In the semis Hofer edged out Sangho Lee (KOR) before comfortably reaching for victory in all-Italian final against his teammate Coratti.
With Hofer in first, and Coratti in second, Sangho Lee rounded out the men’s podium in third place after winning his small final matchup against Stefan Baumeister (GER).
In the PSL ranking Arvid Auner maintained his top spot with 189 points, but he’s now just four points above Lee, who has 185 points. Prommegger sits in third place with 166 points.
Over in the overall parallel ranking Lee is still leading the way as he slightly increased his advantage over Baumeister after Piancavallo’s PSL competition. With two more individual competition left in 2021/22 Lee has 494 points, while Baumeister follows behind in second with 456 points.
The FIS Snowboard Alpine World Cup action continues tomorrow with the PSL Mixed Team event, set to begin with pre-finals at 13:00, followed immediately by finals at 14:00.
WATCH LIVE
TV Broadcast: ORF Sport + (Austria), BNT3 (Bulgaria), CCTV LIVE (China), TV 3 Sport Open (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), TV SLO 2 (Slovenia)
Streaming: Eurosport player (Asia + Europe), CT iBroadcasting (Czech Republic), Viaplay (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), L’Equipe Web (France), Arena 4+ (Hungary), JOJ Sport (Slovakia), Peacock & skiandsnowboard.live (USA), FIS Snowboard Youtube
QUICK LINKS
Piancavallo World Cup FIS data page (start lists, results, etc.)
Full results: WOMEN / MEN
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