Olympics
With the cancellations of two races in Lake Louise, the race program at Beaver Creek, Colorado was expanded to add an extra Super-G race. A four-race weekend got underway yesterday, with the first Men’s Super-G of the season. Marco Odermatt from Switzerland pulled off the fastest time (a 1:08.61), to take his sixth World Cup win. This win is Odermatt’s third top-five result in a row and gives the young Swiss skier a strong lead in the chase for the Overall Globe. Lake Louise downhill winner Matthias Mayer from Austria finished in 2nd, a distant 0.78s behind Odermatt.
After their race at home, the Canadian men’s speed team had six athletes enter to race. Leading the group was 27-year-old Broderick Thompson, who was competing in his 48th world cup. Thompson left the gate mid-pack, 35th out of 61 athletes. The 2015 Super-G NorAm Cup champion came down just less than a second off Odermatt’s time and would end the day with the first World Cup podium in his career. ‘I had a couple key spots in my run that I knew I had to nail, I nailed them…’ Thompson said on Alpine Canada’s Instagram, ‘Carried speed all the way down… I was surprised, to say the least… but I’m unbelievably stoked.’ Thompson’s teammate Trevor Philp was 2nd ranked Canadian, who came down 18th and marked a new personal best in World Cup Super-G.
For the second race in a row, Vermont’s Ryan Cochrane-Siegle was the US Ski Team’s fastest athlete. Cochrane-Siegle finished 19th, with teammate Travis Ganong just 0.11s behind him in 22nd. Other notable results included Alexis Pinterault (FRA) in sixth, Beat Fuez (SUI) in 12th, and 2011 Super-G World Champion Christof Innerhofer from Italy in 31st. Speed powerhouses Aleks Aamodt Kilde (NOR), Dominik Paris (ITA), and Max Franz (AUT) would all be a part of an extensive, 14-racer DNF list which also included Colorado’s River Radamus.
The men’s tour sticks in Beaver Creek for three more races this weekend, including another Super-G and two Downhills. After Beaver Creek, the men head to Val d’Isere, France for a Giant Slalom and a Slalom event on the 11th and 12th of December. The women also race speed this weekend, with the first Downhill of the women’s season happening on the 2nd of December.
Full race results & schedules can be found on fis-ski.com
