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Better sponsorship is needed to boost the chances of success for Italian skiers after a modest World Cup season, giant slalom specialist Massimiliano Blardone has said.

The global financial crisis is hitting skiing like every other sport and with the Vancouver Winter Olympics looming in February 2010, Blardone has sounded the alarm.

"Our federation has many strong skiers but it doesn't manage to market the value of the athletes in the best way. We've not been able to find big sponsors which would help us work in a better way," Blardone said.

"Given what we've got, the results we are getting are really great. So we hope the situation improves and puts us skiers in a more favourable position so we can do better than we are now.

"We hope that next season we can get some good training in because at a federal level it is quite difficult as everyone knows."

Blardone finished fourth in the men's giant slalom in this season's World Cup, which ended in Are in Sweden at the weekend, having had three podium places. He was fifth in the World Championships in Val d'Isere in February.

Peter Fill was the top Italian male skier in the World Cup but was only 10th overall while Nadia Fanchini was ninth in the women's overall competition, having grabbed a bronze in Val d'Isere in the downhill.

Italy won no World Cup titles, a stark contrast to last season when Manfred Moelgg took the men's slalom crown and Denise Karbon won the women's giant slalom.

"It doesn't worry us, we haven't won two World Cups but we've been 20, 30 points away. We are not far away, the class athletes are there. The men and women are both going well," Blardone said.

"If the season has gone a bit so-so it is better that it was this season and not the next," he joked, referring to Vancouver.

"The season for me has been good because I changed all my equipment in April 2008, so it was a season where I had to learn to use the new equipment. Good results have come out of that."

After the Italian national championships at the end of the month, Blardone, who has won four World Cup races but none since December 2007, intends to take very little time off before preparing for next winter.

"Our work is like any other, you maybe have 10 days of holidays and then you get back to work," he said. "The gym is important and then the first few days in August we'll go to South America and have some good training there."

Reuters