Once Tina Maze retires, Slovenian skiing will become insignificant

Why is the image of Slovenian skiing fading?

9. december 2014 ob 13.27 • Ljubljana - MMC RTV SLO

With the exception of Tina Maze, who trains with her own team, the situation surrounding Slovenia's Alpine skiing is helpless. Foto: EPA

"Generations of skiers and coaches have been taught all the wrong things. We're heading towards a dead end. There is no strategy. We need a new Vogrinec," is Iztok Belehar's reaction to the crisis in Slovenian skiing.

With the exception of Tina Maze, who trains with her own team, the situation surrounding Slovenia's Alpine skiing is helpless. At world cup races Slovenia is left to pick the crumbs. Out of the 429 Slovenian points this season, Tina Maze has won 380. That's 88,5 percent of the total. The men's ski team returned from the North American tour without a single point. The results were more than poor and in some cases ranked alongside some of the exotic countries. We asked Janez Šmitek and Iztok Belehar, two doyens of Slovene skiing, to explain the current situation. We then also asked the head of the ski teachers and coaches association at the Slovenian Ski Association, Blaž Lešnik, to comment Belehar's remarks about Slovenia's inadequate ski schools.
Bad work conditions
Šmitek was short: "I don't like to comment, because compared to other national teams, Slovenians train in poor conditions." Iztok Belehar has a different opinion – the source of the problem isn't the lack of funds ("They've already used up almost the entire budget, so they clearly are training a lot."), but in our ski schools, which are inadequate. According to Belehar, Slovenia's ski schools have been this way for twenty years now.

"If we had no experts, even Tina Maze wouldn't know how to ski"
Have Slovenia's ski schools really been sleeping in the past 20 years. We asked the head of the ski teachers and coaches association at the Slovenian Ski Association, Blaž Lešnik. "Whoever thinks that Slovenia's ski schools have been sleeping has clearly had no contact with our work or what we do. The quality of our professional work in the field of skiing has been acknowledged by many top results. If we had fallen asleep, Tina Maze would also be skiing 'the wrong way'. If what all those 'critic from afar' say is true, then many of Tina's predecessor's would have also learned all the wrong moves and techniques, as well as all her potential successors who are still maturing in these difficult times. But nevertheless our young skiers show good results at the most important international competitions for children."
Are Slovenians still a skiing nation?
According to Blaž Lešnik, one of the reasons for the situation Slovenian skiing has found itself in is also in the increasingly difficult economic situation. Today we have considerably less children competing, compared to our days of glory.