Like most ski racers, DSV athlete Romed Baumann has no experience of the World Cup speed track “Vertigine” in Cortina. The slope was specially laid out for the World Championships and the Olympic Games in five years. The native Tyrolean made do with watching a test run by Italian legend Kristian Ghedina on the track on YouTube. Baumann revealed this before his first World Cup appearance in the combination on Wednesday.
“I heard that only the Italians have driven there and they certainly don’t tell us much,” he said. “They make a little secret of it,” says Baumann, despite the lack of spectators, with a small home advantage. The hopes of the Italians are specifically on defending Super G champions Dominik Paris and Christof Innerhofer, who won gold in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 2011. The two drove the Italian championships on the Vertigine 2019, last year the World Cup final in Cortina could not take place due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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