A lot of the spotlight had been focused on the fact Lindsey Vonn and Aksel Lund Svindal, two of the greatest in alpine skiing of all times, will retire from professional alpine skiing after the world championships in Åre. That was also one of the reasons why a large portion of the audience at the men’s super G was Norwegian. However, Svindal would not be one of the top three in what was most likely the last super G race of his career.
Svindal summarized his impression of the event by saying with a smile: “It was dark! But it was competitive and fair.”
Line corrections, bumps and mistakes saw a high number of racers crash out but as Bode Miller quoted after the race, this was all about three medals. Apart from that there was nothing to fight for apart from personal glory. Three medals was all the take home that was available with the top fifteen getting WCSL points. in all 21 did not make it to the results page, including Jack Gower who was disqualified for missing the last gate despite some impressive last splits
Svindal, Feuz and Jansrud were three of the favourites not to make the top 15 finishers in a race that saw the top three finish within nine hundredths of the win and the first ten within half a second of the win.
Instead, Italian Dominik Paris, Italy, set the bar high. Wearing bib number three, Paris took the lead and his performance turned out to be the fastest of the day. In the end the top three athletes all ended up within nine hundreds of a second of each other. The battle for second and third place ended up being between Austrian Vincent Kriechmayr and Frenchmen Johan Clarey who, after the conclusion, came in with the exact same time.
The slope section Kanonröret turned out to be a decisive part of the course as many had problems handling the technical difficulties it offered. Svindal ended up in 16th place but will have a new chance to “go out with a bang” in the men’s downhill on Saturday.
This was a first Italian World Championship win since Innerhofer won in Garmisch in 2011
Full results