Austrians rack
up another Gold
The snow may have been like glue and the clouds overcast, but this
was a day of Olympic action nonetheless.
Marco Schwarz won another alpine Gold for the host country
but was made to work hard for it down the Olympia course.
Slovakian Miha Hrobat took the lead in the first run yet
missed a gate on the second run to hand the Austrian his second Gold
of the Games after having won the Super Combined.
Italian Hannes Zingerle (first medal) and Swiss Sandro
Simonet from Switzerland took the silver and bronze respectively.
Schwarz is a talented racer and great things are expected for his
future. Yet talking with the Head Coach of the Austrian Team the
morning of the race, Toni Giger, Gold was not expected. No one told
Schwarz that. For Sandro Simonet, this was another medal to add to
his personal haul having taken the bronze in the Super Combined as
well.
Sadly for Paul Henderson, starting 44, an error at the top of the
course and he had crashed out before he really had a chance to
attack the course. “I was going good at the top,” he explained in
the finish, “yet I made a mistake and was bang on my hip.” Asked if
the occasion was getting to him, Henderson said that he had ”tried
to treat each race as another race but sometimes the moment would
get to him.” With just one race to go Henderson feels he is gearing
up for his favourite discipline. “The snow was like glue,” reflected
Henderson and while the course crew did a great job of keeping the
ruts to a minimum, this was something that caused fifteen of the
field of 64 on the first run to crash out.
