The first Alpine World Cup of the season gets underway this weekend in Soelden

What Is It?

• Long established as the Alpine season opener, the history of the Soelden World Cup stretches back to 1993

When’s the Action?

• The women’s GS goes off on Saturday (28 October), with the men’s race following on Sunday (29 October)

Who’s Representing Britain?

• Charlie Raposo is the sole British representative at Soelden this year, with the 2023 race representing Charlie’s sixth World Cup visit to the Austrian resort

What are Charlie’s thoughts heading into the race?

What are your aims for the 2023/24 season?

Over the past two years I’ve shown some strong performances at World Cup and World Championships level, and my goal now is to solidify those and make the next step to the top 30 in the World Cup. I’ve got to continue to be consistent, race-to-race, and really show that I belong at the top level.

What are you expecting from yourself this weekend?

I’ve had a great summer of preparation. We’ve been really focusing on the process of getting better at what I’m doing. Of course, I’m going in there and wanting to throw down some great skiing and achieve a good result, and a good result is getting into the second run. So of course my goal is to be in that second run and hope I put down my skiing in conditions that will allow me to do that, but at the end of the day my expectation for myself is to go in with a good mindset and be able to execute some solid skiing and see where that stacks me up in the first race of the year. We’ve then got a seven week window before the rest of the season, so we have time to continue to prepare. I’m just looking to go in there, send it, and put down the best run I can.

What’s Our Track Record?

• The best British result at Soelden remains Chemmy Alcott’s tenth place finish at the 2008 edition, one of seven times Chemmy raced in Soelden, and her career best GS World Cup result

What Else is There to Know?

• Soelden is the largest municipality in Austria, but has a small permanent population dwarfed by huge tourist numbers taking advantage of its famed Alpine heritage
• The World Cup circuit takes place on the Rettenbach glacier on the Wilfspitze mountain
• The 2002 Women’s race saw a remarkable three-way shared victory, as Tina Maze, Andrine Flemmen, and Niki Hosp all recorded identical winning times
• The 2022 edition saw Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt take victory ahead of Slovenia’s Zan Kranjec and Norwegian Henrik Kristoffersen