Last year he won the overall World Cup, but he failed prematurely at the Olympics – Martin Nörl is now starting the new season with a win on a demanding course. The disappointment seems to have been overcome, instead the snowboard crosser underlines his ambitions.
In the fog of Les Deux Alpes, Martin Nörl kept his perspective. The snowboard crosser didn’t let the bad visibility, the wind or the highly decorated competitors deter him from his dream start to the World Cup winter. In the “Big Finale”, last season’s overall winner prevailed in front of the Italian Olympic bronze medalist Omar Visintin and the Beijing bronze medalist Eliot Grondin (Canada).
“The conditions were definitely on the limit. Even though I rode against the usual suspects in the final with Eguibar, Visintin and Grondin, the wind blew away one or the other favorite,” said Nörl: “Nevertheless, I’m really happy. That’s there Boost for confidence.”
The start of the season should have taken place in mid-October, but was then postponed. Strong gusts of wind, snowfall and fog also made it impossible to hold the event on the 3,400-metre-high glacier at the second attempt on Saturday. It didn’t get much better on Sunday, and yet the races started. Nörl coped best with the conditions – and looks aggressively into the future.
“I’m going into the next races with confidence. And I want to continue playing at the front,” said the 29-year-old, who won three races and the big crystal globe last winter, but was unlucky at the high point of the season. At the Winter Games in Beijing in February, Snowboard Germany’s gold hopes were eliminated in the quarter-finals after a collision. Nörl has digested the disappointment.
In his slipstream, junior world champions Leon Ulbricht and Leon Beckhaus also made it into the quarter-finals in the French Alps, for them it was enough for places 11 and 15. In the women’s category, Jana Fischer finished 18th when 19-year-old Australian Josie Baff won.