Tchiknavorian ahead of Val Thorens opener: 'Sometimes it's nice to show your teeth'

Melvin Tchiknavorian says his experience in ski cross has taught him that "sometimes it's nice to show your teeth" as he prepares for this week’s opening races of the FIS Ski Cross World Cup in Val Thorens.

"Val Thorens is where I learned everything about ski cross almost ten years ago," Tchiknavorian told FIS ahead of the opening races of the new season on Thursday 12 and Friday 13 December.

"It was here that I went to my first races in the French championship with Jean-Fréd Chapuis, the local legend here. So I'm happy to be here."

"We know that our families and friends are coming as well for the races," the Frenchman continued. "So it's a good event to launch this season pretty well."

Tchiknavorian says if there’s anything he’s learned in the decade that has followed those early twists and turns in Val Thorens as a teenager, it’s that being too nice tends not to reward you in elite sport.

"I've learned to be," he says when asked if a competitive spirit is part of his make-up. "I mean, I was not 10 years ago. Maybe I was too kind.

"Then in the Europa Cup you learn how to fight - within the rules, but it's hard to change your mind between real life and on the skis.

"You have to be competitive for sure; aggressive, staying within rules as well, but sometimes it's nice to show your teeth."

If he does have a competitive nature, that would have come to the fore when he found himself recently left out of the French ski cross team, forced to make his own way to competitions.

"I was kicked out of the French ski team two years ago," he says. "So last year, I was training alone, I was fighting to come back into the team.

"In my head it was like I was racing just for me, just doing what I could do on the course. If it's good, okay, let's go for another one. But if it was not; OK, let's stop.

"So (there was) no result pressure, no target as well. I just wanted to do my best, and finally it came pretty good. So now I'm just trying to do the same and to improve again."

For Tchiknavorian, doing his best meant securing a spot on a World Cup podium after making it into the big final Reiteralm in February, after having made it to the semi-final stage in Bakuriani a few weeks prior. As a result of his impressive skiing, he's back on the team.

"It's a great taste,” he said of the podium place. “Now you have it, you want it again. The hardest is to find the key of the course."

The 27-year-old appears to have found that key in his favoured track. He qualified in the top ten for both of this week's races in Val Thorens, a course he describes as "very strategic" and one where it's difficult for any one skier to dominate across both days.

"It's hard because you have some different, special parts," he said. "You have a long flat on the top, that's pretty good for the heavyweights - they gain speed and they keep it all along the course.

"Then the middle parts, it's like Super G big turns; all the other turns are coming pretty quickly. Then you arrive in the last big negative turn.

"Usually it's there where you can pass the others if you are behind. So even if you don't start well, you have the time to come back and to pass before the end. So that's why it's very hard to stay in front.

"It's a very strategic course here in Val Thorens and usually it's hard to win the two races here."

Tchiknavorian was not the only male athlete to impress on qualification day. The three athletes in the men's section who fired the biggest warning shots in Wednesday's qualifications were Simone Deromedis, Florian Wilmsmann and Kevin Drury, who incredibly all finished in the top three for both days of racing.

They will be looking to apply pressure on the hometown favourites Youri Duplessis Kergomard and Tchiknavorian, as well as last season's top three in the overall; Reece Howden, Alex Fiva and eventual Crystal Globe winner David Mobaerg.

In the women's section, there was a return to qualification for Sandra Naeslund, who missed the majority of last season through injury and immediately put down a marker by qualifying fastest for both races.

The Swede was closely followed in every sense by India Sherret, who last year won her first World Cup race in Alleghe, and showed that this year she wants more. She finished six tenths of a second behind Naeslund in the first round of qualification and nine tenths of a second in the second.

"It was good," Sherret said after a day of double qualification success in which she skied with typically fearless abandon.

"The first one was good, and the second one was... I think it might have been one of those 'on the edge, is scary-loose but fast' situations."

Add to that the fact that last year’s Crystal Globe winner Marielle Thompson put down qualis of fourth and third, and Marielle Berger Sabbatel – who finished agonisingly behind Thompson last season – is in the top eight for both races, and we are sure to see plenty of exciting races in the French slopes this week.

The first day of Ski Cross World Cup racing at Val Thorens gets underway at 2pm CET on Thursday 12 December, and the second kicks off at 12.30 pm CET on Friday 13 December.