The Canadian snowfall thwarted the men’s Alpine Skiing World Cup. After only one instead of three races in Lake Louise, the speed aces flew on to Colorado on Monday with little success. In Beaver Creek, four competitions are on the program from Thursday, starting on Wednesday with the only downhill training. With the ÖSV stars around Vincent Kriechmayr and Matthias Mayer, there was a mixture of anticipation and sadness.
“That is not exactly the yield we were hoping for,” said Kriechmayr after hearing about the canceled Super-G on Sunday. “It’s a shame, of course. I hope that next week with the four races will work out halfway,” agreed Mayer. The Carinthian had prevailed on Saturday in the downhill in the Canadian Banff National Park before his teammate.
“Beaver Creek is of course something different from Lake Louise, I would have preferred to drive there again. But of course I will see there that I can build on my performance,” emphasized Mayer. The shape of both obviously fits, and Max Franz is also feeling good after having had back problems for the time being. “I’m in a very good mood, everything is working right now. Of course you want to race when it fits. But it has to be fair races,” said the fifth on Saturday.
According to Mayer, four races – two downhill runs and Super-G – in four days are “a tough program”. Whereby the batteries should be comparatively full after saving the energy for two trips in Lake Louise. “The physical strain is not the issue because it is more of a shorter descent and a shorter Super-G,” said Kriechmayr.
The Upper Austrian is especially looking forward to returning to the USA, where there had been no races last year, as in Canada due to the pandemic. “It’s also a very fast track, but with a completely different character. Very steep steep slope, long jumps normally, we didn’t have that,” explained the double world champion from Cortina d’Ampezzo. “For me it is one of the most beautiful descents, but to be up there you need a lot of commitment and risk from top to bottom.”
The character of the Birds of Prey slope is different, “you have to be prepared for that,” Mayer also announced. In contrast to Franz and Kriechmayr, who won his first World Cup race there in 2017 with the Super-G, Beaver Creek is still missing on the credit side. Franz won the Super-G the following year. It would not be a sensation if one or the other won another victory this year, because Lake Louise “was a confirmation that the team is simply really strong,” said Franz everything a little easier. “
One can look forward to Beaver Creek, said Andreas Puelacher, head of men’s racing. “We can go there with a big chest. We can be self-confident, we can ski confidently. Those are attributes that will help us in the next races.” At the event organizer in Lake Louise, the Tyrolean need to catch up in terms of professionalism: “For example, we had slides, they were children. It is also clear that children cannot get out the snow.” On Sunday, however, many people would have been of no use in view of the amount of snow, added Puelacher.
–
