Enlarge image
Vincent Kriechmayr
Photo: Marco Trovati/AP
The Austrian Vincent Kriechmayr won the first of two downhill races on the legendary Kitzbüheler Streif.
The Italian Florian Schieder sensationally finished second ahead of the Swiss Niels Hintermann.
With a time of 1:56.16 minutes, Kriechmayr set the best time on the Streif downhill run, which he actually disliked so much.
The more than 20,000 spectators saw a spectacular competition in which the Swiss top favorite Marco Odermatt almost fell, as did Aleksandar Aamodt Kilde from Norway.
In the course of the competition, the slope conditions improved, so that even starters with high start numbers were able to advance.
One person in particular took advantage of this: Florian Schieder with start number 43 still raced to second place (+ 0.23 seconds).
For him it was the first podium in the World Cup.
Behind Niels Hintermann (Switzerland, + 0.31 seconds), the American Jared Goldberg just missed the first top 3 place of his career (+ 0.35 seconds).
Thomas Dreßen and Andreas Sander from the DSV team also showed appealing performances, but were washed out of the top ten by the numerous good runs of the downhillers with high starting numbers.
In the end, Dreßen was 0.87 seconds behind Kriechmayr in 13th place, Sander took 15th place (+ 0.94 seconds).
Romed Baumann, Josef Ferstl and Dominik Schwaiger disappointed as 32nd, 49th and 55th.
Heavy fall causes interruption
A serious fall by the Norwegian Henrik Røa overshadowed the most dangerous descent in the world, where the athletes reach top speeds of 140 km/h: The 27-year-old rolled over just before the finish line and had to be transported by rescue helicopter.
The race was interrupted for a long time.
On Saturday there will already be the second descent on the Streif.
After the corona-related spectator restrictions of the past few years, the organizers wanted to let as many spectators as possible on the track again this winter, but as a precaution spread this over two events.
mfu