Marco Odermatt is hoping for gold in the Super-G, but the Swiss blunders into fourth place. Things are going much better in the World Cup downhill. There he stormed furiously to the title. The German downhillers don’t come close to medals.
The German downhill skiers missed out on medals in the sensational gold run of Swiss rider Marco Odermatt. Thomas Dreßen was the best DSV athlete at the World Championships in Courchevel, only 0.26 seconds behind the bronze medal and after his tenth place he again complained about pain in his bruised knee.
“It was the perfect ride,” said Odermatt, who had distanced the top favorite Aleksander Aamodt Kilde from Norway by an impressive 0.48 seconds to take silver. Surprise man Cameron Alexander from Canada (0.89) was third. Andreas Sander, who unexpectedly came second in the world championships in the supreme alpine discipline two years ago, missed the top 15 like Romed Baumann and Josef Ferstl. Baumann took 19th place, Ferstl was 27th and Sander was even further behind in 29th.
Dreßen hobbled to the interviews and reported that he “had to take two different, very strong painkillers in order to be able to drive at all”. He doesn’t want to use that as an excuse, “the others were better”. But: “My bruise is right in the joint, you stand on it all the time while driving, you land on it with every jump, you always feel it.”
The 25-year-old Odermatt has never won a downhill in the World Cup – but his triumph is not a big surprise. He was second seven times and also the top favorite in the Super-G, which he finished fourth. For 30-year-old Dominator Kilde, who had won five out of eight downhills this season, it was the second silver medal after that in Super-G.
One of the defeated on the L’Eclipse slope was defending champion Vincent Kriechmayr from Austria, who finished a hundredth of a second behind Dreßen. Olympic champion Beat Feuz, the last Swiss downhill world champion in 2017, resigned shortly before the World Cup.
