Image: GEPA/Mario Buehner
“It will probably be his only appearance,” said ÖSV racing director Marko Pfeifer on Sunday in Méribel about the Vorarlberger, who was seeded in the Alpine combination on Tuesday. According to the current status, further deployments are not foreseeable. “In principle, he is currently not the issue in slalom. You have to say it so clearly,” Pfeifer stated.
Strolz had sensationally won Olympic gold in the combination last year in Beijing, even before that he had celebrated his first World Cup victory in Adelboden in the slalom. This season, however, Strolz was not even granted a top ten place in his special discipline. The 30-year-old competed in eight slaloms, dropping out six times. The four ÖSV starting places in the slalom, the final competition at the World Cup on February 19th, will probably go to Manuel Feller, Marco Schwarz, Fabio Gstrein and Adrian Pertl.
“Maybe that’s exactly what will help him this time. He has nothing to lose and can just drive freely,” said Pfeifer. “I would really wish him a bit of a liberation and get back on track.” It is probably partly a mental issue why Strolz so often pass threaders in the race. In training on Sunday he drove “like a bell again”, reported Pfeifer.
“It’s a bit tedious for me when I keep having to say in interviews that everything or a lot is right. But in the end it’s like this: I ski well, I have to work my way back to the rest,” emphasized Strolz. The fact that the World Cup is coming up “helps you get over it faster, on the other hand it hurts extremely. But it hurt less in Chamonix than in Kitzbühel – that really bothered me.” There is “no one who simply says: It doesn’t matter at all. It’s just a matter of finding your way back.”
For the parallel team competition at the World Cup, there is still the option of bringing Strolz on board. “But we have to see what happens before then,” said Pfeifer. Strolz knew about the basic plan. “Now we’ll drive the station wagon, then we’ll see.” In addition, defending champions Marco Schwarz, Raphael Haaser, Vincent Kriechmayr and Stefan Babinsky are at the start for Austria in the discipline.
Source: Nachrichten
