Mikaela Shiffrin’s marker, close men's circuit and return of fans – Takeaways from Solden

Sometimes when you are watching the first weekend of the new season in Solden you have to stop and take a breath to realise how, on the face of it, utterly absurd it all is.

These athletes have been training for months in all four corners of the globe for this moment. And it’s all over after two runs each lasting a little over one minute. Then that’s it. Thank you very much we’ll see you in a month.

Skiing’s unique season opener can be a tricky one to evaluate. Sometimes it can be a real marker of things to come, sometimes it can be nothing more than a fluke result.

Here are a few thoughts from the two days of racing as we try to make sense of what we saw.

Okay so this is hardly an original take but Skiing is one of the last sports to get fans back en masse due to the timings of the season and, as with every sport, it is more than welcome.

There were flags of all nations flying (even New Zealand for Alice Robinson!) and the noise certainly added to the occasion, and was a timely reminder of just how different it was last season.

But more than the general atmosphere it was also the little things that really stood out. River Radamus (more on him later) entertaining the crowd with his snow leopard hairstyle. The Austrian PA bellowing out ominous, foreshadowing music before Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt took to the skis. Simply a coincidence? Trying to get into the Halloween spirit early? Or simply a bit of humorous trolling? We don’t know but it certainly added to the spectacle.

We will have to wait and see how the winter goes but after such a great opening weekend fans can already start top get excited about the prospect of Kitzbuhel, Val d’Isere, Lake Louise and Killington.

Speaking of American racing, what a weekend for Mikaela Shiffrin. Her build-up involved her candidly talking about never feeling ready and never really truly knowing where she’s at until Solden comes.

If the opening weekend is anything to go by, she’s in a pretty damn good place.

Shiffrin put in the best time of the second run, going second-to-last out of the gates. We just don’t normally see it. For reference in the men’s race the best time of the second run went to Lucas Braathen, who went 11th out of the gates. It’s a great insight into what makes Shiffrin so special. Technical skiing is set up to make it tough on the riders who go towards the end to try and make it more competitive, she just blows those rules to pieces.

And while we’re at it, let’s give our props to the woman who finished second, Lara Gut-Behrami. It was so nearly a Swiss double with Gut-Behrami beating Shiffrin in the opening run and then falling agonisingly short, just 0.14s to be precise, with her second run.

After a couple of really tough years following injury last season looked like Gut-Behrami back to her best. There is no doubt now that the Swiss skier is well and truly back and she will be a real contender for both World Cup globes and Olympic medals. For the rest of the pack? There’s work to do.

The gap between Shiffrin and Gut-Behrami and the rest of the pack was over a second. Tessa Worley in eighth was over two seconds down on the eventual winner. It’s perhaps a little bit of a surprise but there is a clear hierarchy in the women’s tour that you can use to more or less predict results.

That is not the case in the men’s tour. Last season there 20 different race winner for the men, contrastingly it was just 12 for the women.

On Sunday less than a second separated the entire top ten.

And it could have been even more. Here are some of the names who finished outside the top ten. Mathieu Faivre, Marco Schwarz, Henrik Kristoffersen, Manuel Feller and Loic Meillard. All could be top ten finishers (or higher) on their day.

Since the retirement of Marcel Hirscher the men’s tour has been anyone’s guess. Neither Kristoffersen nor Alexis Pinturault have really taken hold of the tour as we might have expected. Yes the Frenchman won the overall last year at a relatively comfortable clip but don’t forget we lost three races at the end of the season that were never rescheduled, all speed events. Sundays race-winner Marco Odermatt could well have closed the gap.

The men’s tour is going to be unpredictable this year, and skiing is better for it.

Finally a word on the other North American racers. With men’s No 1 Tommy Ford unlikely to be back until December you could have been forgiven for switching off at just Shiffrin.

Forgiven, but horribly, horribly mistaken.

The aforementioned Radamus was one of the surprises of the weekend, rising up from bib 26 to finish in sixth, the best result of his career. Radamus’ speed has never been in doubt but if he can start putting things together in an Olympic year that will be huge for Team USA. We also saw the long awaited return of Ryan Cochran-Siegle.

Everyone liked that.

In the women’s race on Saturday it was double delight for the Americans with Nina O’Brien continuing her steady ascent with a ninth placed finish. There was unexpected joy for the Canadians too with Valerie Grenier up in seventh. Skiing needs strong rest of the world representation bar Shiffrin and having these skiers to add to the likes of Robinson is great to see.