Legendary Svindal

In glorious weather, the Saslong welcomed the ski racers for today's hosting of the Alpine Ski Downhill. And it seemed to be a day of big surprises. After the surprising victory of the German Josef Ferstl in yesterday's Super-G, the German racers seemed to be extremely keen to do even better. And promptly the German driver Thomas Dressen took the lead as the 8th driver. That was already an outright sensation. The Germans immediately felt reminded of the golden times under Olympic champion Markus Wasmeier. And promptly his colleagues were to line up in front and form a great trio with him. And that this should be a good result was also shown by Peter Fill, Erik Guay - runner-up in the 2017 World Cup - or Matthias Mayer, who were placed behind them. But then Svindal came along. One didn't know what to expect from the tall Norwegian after his protracted knee injury, who "only" took 9th place in the Super G yesterday. But the run was strong, a dominant and confident Aksel Lund Svindal shot down the Saslong as if it was nothing and took an incredible 1.34 seconds from the leader at the finish. It was clear then that this was really strong, no one would be able to top it. And so it came to pass. Only his compatriot Kjetil Jansrud was able to threaten him and it was he who managed to stay close to Svindal, but by the finish he had lost 59 hundredths of a second: Double lead Norway! Deserved!! As expected, the strongest Swiss skier was Beat Feuz, who showed his usual courageous skiing, but lost 1.17 seconds to Svindal at the finish. Then came Dominik Paris, who wanted to shine here in his home country, and succeeded in doing so. The hunk from South Tyrol advanced to intermediate rank 3. To the delight of the locals, Christopg Innerhofer was able to top his compatriot's result and moved ahead of Paris. That Max Franz managed to get on the podium was a bit surprising, after all he had not been able to shine in the recent past, but you know of him, he is always good for a top position. The surprise of the day, especially from the Swiss point of view, was the terrific ride of Gilles Roulin, who advanced to fourth place with bib number 32 and thus achieved his absolutely best World Cup result of his young career - he has been in the World Cup since 2017. Congratulations on that. Is he a new Colombin? All in all, a wonderful downhill race on a challenging slope in bright weather with a very worthy winner!

Ranking downhill Val Gardena, 16.12.2017