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Didier Defago captures Bormio Downhill

Didier Defago took his fourth career World Cup win in Downhill down the Stelvio course amid changing conditions and flat light. The thin snow covering meant that the course was littered with lots of bumps and this made the skis chatter down the course. This did not seem to have worried Defago who was grateful for his early start. Defago is a smooth skier and rightly felt that the snow would soften and this would help him. With compatriot Patrick Kueng in second and winner of the final training run, Klaus Kroell in third, the race was tantalisingly awkward for the likes of Miller (5^th) and Cuche (8^th). Beat Feuz, who lead the Downhill World Cup coming into the race, managed to bang his feet together after losing control of his left foot momentarily and then lost the ski altogether. He got up uninjured after the fall.

Defago’s win was the first for a Swiss racer since 1993 when Pirmin Zurbriggen won; Cuche came agonisingly close in 2006 when he was edged out by Michael Walchhofer by 0.01 seconds. Coming into the season, Defago was hoping for some podiums this season, he admitted at the post race press conference, and so this win was a great result considering he had been injured for most of last season. “I felt very comfortable today from top to bottom, I perfectly negotiated the main difficulties of the course and I even congratulated my injured left knee after crossing the finish line,” the skier from Morgins told the press afterwards. “I was happy to wear a low bib number today, I thought it would help me to achieve a strong run, but I didn’t expect to win that race, even when I saw that I was a little but faster than Patrick Kueng. I was aiming for a top-5 here. My main goal this season was a downhill podium. Apparently things went much faster for me than I thought. I guess the fact that I’m enjoying so much to be back on my racing skis after my injury strongly helped me to do so well here after reaching some promising results in recent races, including at Alta Badia where I did much better than expected in giant slalom.”

The Stelvio is a beast of a course and makes racers stand up and be counted. The thin snow cover did not help things and with an overcast day softening the snow for the later runners, the early runners like Defago, exploited the better conditions. With only 57 racers going to the start, no Britons, this is one of the hardest races on the tour and leads in nicely to Wengen and Kitzbuehel, the next two Downhill races in January.

Many of the British racers watching the race will know what it is like to go over the San Pietro Jump that they tackle in the English Alpine Championships Super G. The races take place in February next year. The 60 metre jump at high speed is not for the faint hearted!

With Feuz crashing, Miller now leads the Downhill Globe leading into the Classics; Wengen he has won, last time in 2010 and Kitzbuehel where he is a two time winner of the Combined but has a best of second in the Downhill in 2008 when he infamously rode the Audi banner.

 

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