While the weather was wreaking havoc on the halfpipe qualifiers at Sierra-At-Tahoe the slalom finals were rolling along nicely at Heavenly Valley.

Sandra Farmand may be smiling, but inside she's a bit upset because she's thinking about having to do the Slalom finals all over again.

Riders were happy with the course. Heavenly crews prepared the slope very well. The snow was perfectly groomed and rock solid. The course was not super technical, but it had some humps. Martin Freinademetz explained it. "It’s pretty turny," he said. "There is the first mogul, which you don’t want to be behind on, and then it’s cranky again and there’s another mogul, be careful there and then just let it run to the finish line."

Unfortunately, not everyone was able to make it to the finish line with the proper time. As a storm rolled in across Lake Tahoe, race officials discovered an error in the timing system. Apparently, each of the starting gates had a different start time, meaning the time differentials at the bottom were incorrect. Because this was a head-to-head finals the time differentials were more important than the total times.

That in itself wasn’t that big of a deal. "Here at the finish we have the time of day printouts for each of the courses," said Christian Savioz, course referee and ISF board member. "We have checked all the times and only a few of the results have changed."

The group of racers booed and laughed. "I can not believe you now," one coach said. "It’s bullshit."

Rider’s and coaches explained that because the riders didn’t know their proper differencials they weren’t able to ride in the second run properly. "If someone thinks they’re only ahead by one-hundreth of a second they’re going to ride much different than if they think they have a tenth of a second lead," said World Pro Team Coach Rob Roy.

After a short discussion the race jury decided that to be fair to all the riders the entire race would have to be run again on Friday. This didn’t sit well with the women. Lead by Sandra Farmand, the women wrote and signed a petition stating that they would like their results from the day to stand and that they would like to pick up where they left off. "We don’t want to have to do this whole thing over again," Farmand said. "It’s just stupid."

The race jury said they would have a decision in the morning.

Championship Halfpipe Qualifiers Delayed (2-27-97)
What's the World Championship All About Anyway? (2-26-97)
The European ISF Worlds AT Tahoe (2-26-97)

Back to the '97 ISF World Championship Index

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