Kostelic critical of ice

Croatia's former slalom world champion Ivica Kostelic has criticised Olympic organisers for creating an icy course for the technical events. Kostelic will take to the slalom slope on Tuesday in the men's combined but says he is unhappy with the use of water on the surface to create an icy top.

"I prefer snow. I also think icing is wrong. It is not good for the health of the competitors. Alpine skiing is meant to be on snow and not ice. If you want to ski on ice then we have to go ice skating," Kostelic told Reuters.

The Croatian, whose sister Janica, a triple Olympic champion from Salt Lake City, is also competing at the Games, said organisers had taken the easy way out.

"Their point in icing courses is to have the same conditions for everyone, so the number 60 can have good conditions as well.

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ALPINE SKIING 2006 Ivica Kostelic

Image credit: Imago

"But the easiest thing is to ice the course because it is over in half an hour. The hardest thing is to make quality snow, hard, quality snow. It takes one month to make, with compression and a lot of work and no one wants to do this," he said.

Kostelic says he suffers in particular from the harder pressure put on knees by an iced course.

"I had seven operations on my knee. For me on ice, I can't push so hard. It's stupid I think we should ski on snow.

"There are a lot more shocks (in your knees), shocks are coming from ice, you need to push a lot harder on ice to get the same turns and that is why my knee hurts all the time," he said.

The Croat said that as well as making life easy for organisers, iced courses favour the sport's most powerful teams.

"First it's simple for organisers ... the second thing it is good for the big nations. Why? Because they have the pistes and the machinery to make ice but small nations do not have the machinery. We need to train on ice if we are to race on it.

"And this is one more step in destroying World Cup and skiing, driving the small nations away," he said.

"The big nations are not so concerned about injuries.

Croatia we have only one or two (top) skiers. When one is injured, we only have one left or none at all. Austrians they have 20 skiers – if one gets injured nobody cares," he said.

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