ALPINE SKI WORLD CUP 1997/98 Madonna di Campiglio(ITA) Men's 3rd Slalom. 22.Dec.1997 Christmas tiff spoils World Cup party The pre-Christmas World Cup Alpine skiing campaign fizzled out in acrimony and a notable absence of seasonal goodwill on Monday after another race was lost to bad weather. An International Ski Federation (FIS) official stormed out of a news conference, Italian ski ace Alberto Tomba was denied a final World Cup appearance in Madonna and his thousands of disappointed fans slunk away having seen nothing. Like a dud Christmas cracker, the first leg of the season ended with a whimper rather than a bang. FIS postponed a men's slalom race in the morning saying rising overnight temperatures combined with heavy snowfall over the past three days had made the Miramonti piste dangerous. But local piste preparers who had worked overnight in a bid to ensure the race went ahead said the course was ski able and Tomba said FIS should at least have started the slalom to see how the course held up. ``It's a great shame for all the people who have come up to Madonna. They could at least have tried to race,'' Tomba said. In a stormy news conference, FIS's World Cup race director Guenter Hujara hit back, accusing Tomba of thinking only of himself and his fans who had driven up through the rain, mist and snow to see him in action. ``Alberto is a great showman,'' Hujara said. ``He had bib number three (which meant he would have been one of the first skiers down). Give him bib number 18 or 20 and I think his argument would probably be different. ``But I don't want to blame him,'' Hujara added. ``The fact is the conditions were not good enough for a World Cup race.'' He said course inspectors had decided early in the morning to postpone the race by an hour so the piste could be sprayed with chemicals designed to firm up the rapidly melting snow. That failed to work and at 0915 GMT, with the temperature at the foot of the mountain stuck at five degrees centigrade, the race was postponed. ``Sometimes we just have to accept that nature and particularly all these changes in temperature prevent us doing what we want to do,'' Hujara said. He said the race could not be rescheduled for Tuesday as Monday was the last official race day on the calendar before the Christmas break. ``This is a World Cup, it's global, and we can't keep skiers in Europe when they want to go home for Christmas,'' he said. ``If it were the other way round and we were making skiers stay in North America to race on the 23rd and 24th you would be the first to report the tears in Tomba's eyes at missing Christmas at home,'' he told Italian journalists. At one point Hujara walked out of the news conference after the floor was given to Michele Stefani, a piste preparer who had bitterly criticized the decision to cancel what would have been the third men's slalom of the season. ``I'll talk to journalists but I won't listen to a man who insults me when I call off a race,'' Hujara said. He was eventually coaxed back to the microphone. FIS now faces a difficult Christmas as it tries to re schedule a backlog of World Cup races before the winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, in February. One of last week's postponed downhills has been pencilled in for the Italian resort of Bormio on December 30 and other men's and women's races have been moved to Cortina D'Ampezzo (Italy) and Schladming (Austria) in January. Hujara said another downhill might be staged at Wengen (Switzerland) in mid-January while Monday's slalom could be taken to Garmisch-Partenkirchen(Germany) in a month's time. But he said these dates had still to be confirmed. ``In the meantime, while we try to sort out the calendar, Merry Christmas to everyone,'' he said.