Kalle Palander, our number one Alpine skier, is out of the FIS World Cup slalom event (Levi, Finland) this weekend. Before the season Palander was really confident and felt good about the upcoming season but a fracture in his shinbone from the last season (so called repetive stress injury) required a second operation a couple of weeks ago and Kalle is still out of the World Cup circuit for some time.

Kalle Palander is against alpine ski competitions held indoors

Though he is out of the competition, Palander says it straight and thus has some interesting things to say, as usual. According to the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, Kalle Palander says no to skiing competitions held in indoor halls.

“Organizing an event indoors will ruin the sport. Storms and snowing belong to the sport as much as sunshine and bluebird days. The halls are all-right training facilities for juniors but big competitions should not be held indoors. Even a Europe Cup-level start organized indoors would be a total joke. If the runs are somewhere around 23 seconds, the sport will begin to resemble something like swimming with so many different kinds of starts under the same sport…”

Palander has tested indoor skiing in Germany (Hamburg) and in Holland and he states that for solely recreational use they are fine in his opinion.

Palander is recovering and already training lightly

At the moment Kalle is in Levi, watching and commenting the world cup event for the Finnish TV station MTV3. He has also started some light training with cross country skis. He will be back on the slopes in December at the earliest if everything goes well, and he looks forward to being back on the World Cup circuit in January. We sure hope that Kalle will be back chasing gates as soon as possible!

Today the women’s slalom event was skied in Levi, Finland. Linsey Vonn of USA took the gold with her amazing second run recovery. Sweden’s Maria Pietiläinen-Hollmner was second and Germany’s Maria Reisch was third. Finland’s Tanja Poutiainen was 6th and other Finns placed as follows: Tii-Maria Romar 22nd and Sanni Leinonen 24th.

Lindsey Vonn has got her two best results in Levi. I guess she must like Finland? Vonn is from Minnesota, which is known to be a very cold place in winter. No wonder she does so well in Finnish Lapland.

The men’s slalom start in Levi will be held tomorrow, Sunday the 16th of November.