There couldn't be a better timing for Winterberg to celebrate its comeback on the FIS Alpine Snowboard World Cup tour after an absence of ten years as the last parallel slalom of a long season staged in the single run format on Saturday, March 14th, has it all with a bunch of riders battle for the title in the race for the crystal globes on the Poppenberg slope.

While Zan Kosir (SLO), who sits on the top spot of the parallel slalom World Cup ranking with 2,800 having a comfortable lead over Roland Fischnaller (ITA, 2,180), is the odds-on favourite to add his season's third title after having clinched the crystal globe for the pgs and overall alpine snowboard World Cup already, it's a tight battle on the women's side of things.

In the overall ranking, current leader Julie Zogg from Switzerland, who comes into the season's finals with the momentum of five consecutive top-3 finishes in the World Cup of which two were wins and runner-up Marion Kreiner (AUT) are only separated by the tiny mere of 70 points.

While Zogg (4,340) and Kreiner (4,270) seem to be the two riders to settle it among themselves, both also have to have an eye on 2015 parallel giant slalom world champion Ester Ledecka (CZE) who ranks third with 3,840.

In the battle for the crystal globe for the parallel slalom World Cup title Julie Zogg also holds all the aces with 2,550.

However, Sabine Schoeffmann (AUT, 2,250) is within reach while Olympic pgs champion Patrizia Kummer (SUI, 1,820), Ledecka (1,790), reigning world champion Claudia Riegler (AUT, 1,770) and Olympic psl champion Julia Dujmovits (AUT, 1,760) all have fighting chances, too.

Fun fact to add: Claudia Riegler, who placed third in the parallel slalom staged in Winterberg ten years ago will celebrate her 300th World Cup race.

By now, only one rider has had more starts than the oldest snowboarder ever to win a World Cup event: Riegler's younger sister Manuela (307).

Source: fis-ski.com