Austrians top Snowboard FIS World Cup

By Yoon Chul

PYEONGCHANG — The world’s No. 1 snowboarder Benjamin Karl of Austria and fellow Austrian Marion Kreiner were crowned champions of the Snowboard FIS World Cup in the parallel slalom (PSL) event held at the Yongpyong Resort in PyeongChang, Gangwon Province, Wednesday.

Karl defeated his domestic rival Siegfried Grabner in the men’s PSL final.

In the first run he was .44 seconds ahead of Grabner who fell in the second run to give Karl an easy victory.

The Austrian champion has won all of his four latest competitions.

“It is really great. I have won four straight in a row,” Karl told The Korea Times. “I am very happy that lots of people were here to watch and cheer. I really enjoyed the game,” added Karl.

The 25-year-old already showed his prowess crossing the finish line with the fastest time of 29.78 seconds, the only boarder to clock under 30 seconds. But he did come on the verge of being eliminated.

In the first run of his quarterfinal, Karl crossed .39 seconds behind Roland Fischnaller of Italy but the latter missed the chance to beat the world No. 1 with a fall during the second run.

Strong contender Simon Schoch of Switzerland had good runs in the preliminaries and round of 16, but after being 1.01 seconds ahead of Manuel Veith of Austria in the quarters he also fell and was eliminated.

March Aaron of Italy finished third beating Veith.

In the women’s event Kreiner beat Fraenzi Maegert-Kohli of Switzerland in the final, while Svetlana Boldykova of Russia nailed Doris Guenther of Austria for third place.

“I am very excited. It’s been two years since I won. I won the world championships two years ago in Korea. Korea is my lucky land,” Kreiner said.

Guenther was the top seed in the preliminaries but after stumbling in the quarterfinal she collapsed.

In the competition Korean snowboarders including Kim Sang-kyum, who recently snatched the gold medal in the Winter Universiade in Erzurum in Turkey this year, failed to advance to the knock-out round.

What is parallel slalom (PSL) event?

The snowboarding parallel slalom (PSL) event is a speed competition like alpine skiing. However, unlike the latter, two snowboarders compete against each other on red and blue courses looking for the best time to advance to the knock-out round.

The snowboarders have two runs — one on each course — and advance to the next round based on the two times.

In the knock-out round the snowboarders are paired with a new partner for two more runs, but the second one involves a handicap. The winner of the first run gets a time advantage in the second as his opponents start gate opens later.

The penalty times are changed based on the difficulty of the course and scales set by the International Ski Federation (FIS).

At Yongpyong resort the FIS decided the maximum time was 1.19 seconds for men and 1.30 seconds for women.

However, actual penalties are based on the FIS sliding scale — if the winner is one second ahead of the first run, the loser’s gate opens one second later on the second run — up to the set maximum.

In the FIS World Cup at Yongpyong, 35 men and 27 women competed for the title with a respective 16 and eight moving on to the second round.