Critical tones, but you can rely on Kriechmayr

Vincent Kriechmayr has finally overcome his slight dip in form and left Kvitfjell with his hands full. The double world champion from Cortina 2021 followed a second place in the Super-G with his 18th World Cup triumph.

• Also read: Kriechmayr won the Super-G in Kvitfjell

The 32-year-old from Gramastett won the sprint race after an extremely strong finish, 17 hundredths ahead of Jeffrey Read (Can) and 19 ahead of the duo Dominik Paris (Ita) and Marco Odermatt (Sui).

The Swiss reaches for the small crystal ball in the discipline rankings. Before the last race at the finale in Saalbach on March 22nd, he has an 81 point lead over Kriechmayr, who has to win and at the same time hope that Odermatt comes away empty-handed. A pious wish? “It’s only a theoretical chance, Odi won’t let it be taken away from him with his class,” says Kriechmayr skeptically.

Of course, he doesn’t let the unpleasant starting position spoil his good mood: “I’m obviously very happy about this victory. After the mistake in the middle section, I didn’t expect it. I was tense in the classics, but now I’m relaxed again – too the basic speed. It’s nice that it worked out,” explained the Mühlviertler.

On Saturday, Kriechmayr ended the dry spell for the downhill men, who had not achieved a single podium place in the first seven races of the season. Second place behind the Swiss Niels Hintermann was something like the morale injection for the Super-G: “That gave me self-confidence. And as we know, that is the most important thing in skiing,” said the champion. Despite this ray of hope, there were critical tones. Racing director Marko Pfeifer did not explicitly mention the name of downhill coach Sepp Brunner, but his position is apparently on shaky ground within Ski Austria.

“You have to get more serious”

“We have an outdated downhill team that is still keeping us alive. We have to see that we can build something back up,” said Pfeifer after only three top 30 places in Kvitfjell.

Behind Kriechmayr – in the absence of Marco Schwarz, Daniel Hemetsberger and Max Franz – came Daniel Danklmaier (14th) and Stefan Babinsky (28th). “For those who are established, it looks as if the journey is going backwards. Then we have to be more serious, even if we don’t have many there,” said Pfeifer. “I’ll think about something because you can’t drive over 30.”

What the hopefuls are missing – with a few exceptions – are several injury-free years with a fixed starting position in order to get to know the routes. “We need downhill kilometers so that we can get better.”

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