Crawford wins Kitzbuehel downhill for maiden World Cup victory, Odermatt sixth
Canada’s James Crawford scorched to a maiden World Cup victory within the prestigious Kitzbuehel downhill on Saturday in a race fortunately spared the spate of great crashes that marred the super-G.
Crawford, with simply 4 podium locations to his identify in seven seasons on the circuit, laid down a near-perfect run to clock 1min 53.64sec on the difficult 3.3km-long Streif course on the Hahnenkamm mountain overlooking the upmarket Austrian resort.
Switzerland’s Alexis Monney took second, at 0.08sec, with one other Canadian, Cameron Alexander, rounding out the rostrum an extra 0.14sec adrift.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained! Superb stuff, supreme excellence!” boomed the slopeside commentator of Crawford’s run in entrance of tens of hundreds of baying ski followers in heat, sunny circumstances.
“Canadian cowboys! Oh my phrase, unbelievable run by Crawford, he is the person to beat!”
Crawford, a shock winner of world super-G gold in Courchevel in 2023 and Olympic mixed bronze medallist in Beijing the yr beforehand, held on to bag 100,000 euros for his victory and set himself up properly forward of the February 4-16 world championships in Saalbach.
In-form Swiss racer Marco Odermatt, who tops the general and downhill standings, received Friday’s super-G, however might solely end sixth within the blue riband occasion, at 0.55sec, as simply eight-tenths of a second separated the highest 13 racers.
Beginning with bib quantity 20, Crawford hit motorway-coasting speeds of 140km/h, negotiating sections which have an 85-percent gradient and 80-metre jumps, all of the whereas battling crippling centrifugal forces.
The icy course, which has a stomach-churning vertiginous begin that propels racers to 100km/h in 5 seconds, options falls, snakes and rolls by all kinds of terrain.
For these causes, victory in Kitzbuehel is seen because the Holy Grail of alpine snowboarding, usually in comparison with successful at Wimbledon or the Formulation One race in Monaco.
There isn’t any doubt that there’s a voyeuristic, gladitorial draw for the estimated 90,000-strong crowd who flock in for the Kitzbuehel weekend.
However whereas airhorns and whistles made for a deafening enviornment, flares lit and flags waving, there was not one of the crash drama of Friday, which noticed French veteran Alexis Pinturault amongst three evacuated by helicopter, with a critical knee damage.
The occasion attracts a heady combine between champagne-drinking glitterati and younger locals revelling in an alcohol-fuelled ceremony of passage.
Amongst onlookers on Saturday was former California governor and Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger and Swedish soccer nice Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
“That is wonderful, it looks like a house stadium,” stated Ibrahimovic, who performed for a bunch of European golf equipment together with Ajax, Juventus, AC and Inter Milan, Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester United in a storied profession.
“I want I used to be a skier, however I can not ski!”
lp/nr
This text was generated from an automatic information company feed with out modifications to textual content.
