Dominik Paris took the first win of the season in Lake Louise, just edging out Klaus Kroell and Adrien Theaux from France. With the weather playing up at the top of the course and the light not being the best at parts on the course, this was a race that had ... twists and turns and ended up with the Italian winning to ensure his country became the fourth country to win thirty World Cup downhills.First it was Theaux who took the lead then Kroell edged him out and then came the Italian down to snatch the win. Â Winner of the last training run, Aksel Lund Svindal took fourth with Johan Clarey in fifth. Early race leader Georg Streitberger took sixth.
It could have been very different for Svindal as he looked to have been distracted before he had made the first gate as a course slipper just got off the course in time. While Svindal looked to have lost time at the first split, by the time the bug Norwegian had got to the second split it looked like it was going to be business as usual. When he crossed the line Theaux held an advantage of twelve hundredths over the defending World Cup Champion.
The French team are on a roll at the moment: The Giant Slalom team packed the five into the first nine in Soelden including two in the first four! Theaux and then the returning Johan Clarey as well as David Poisson all put in strong performances that suggest that the French team is on a roll again.
It was Georg Streitberger who posted the early best time. Streitberger was almost immediately bettered by his countryman Max Franz before Franz made a mess of the last few gates to undo all his good work.
After Svindal went into second, as the first of the top seeds, there was an inevitable feeling that this was not going to be good enough for a place on the podium. Kroell pushed him down to third as he looked bewildered as to how fast his lower section of the course had been. Next up was Erik Guay who did enough place in the top ten (and qualify for the Canadian Olympic Team) while Beat Feuz, another making his comeback after a year out injured, will have better days but did enough to make 30th spot and a World Cup point on his comeback. Then came Paris.
With his win, the statisticians at Infostrada came up with this:Â Italy's last 6 men's WC downhill podiums are all gold. They are the first country in men's WC DH history to achieve this feat.
Sadly Dougie Crawford, Britain's only racer, failed to finish along with a number of other racers.
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