Austria’s alpine ski women missed a medal in the Olympic downhill run in Beijing. While Cornelia Hütter was the best Austrian in seventh place, ahead of Mirjam Puchner (8th), 77 hundredths behind bronze, gold went to Corinne Suter in Yanqing on Tuesday. The 27-year-old world champion from Switzerland prevailed 0.16 seconds ahead of the top Italian favorite Sofia Goggia and her compatriot Nadia Delago (+0.57).
Thanks to Beat Feuz and Suter, both downhill gold medals at the 2022 games went to Switzerland. For the visibly disappointed defending champion Sofia Goggia, who had been in the lead at the last split, the burden of another knee injury three weeks earlier was apparently too great. The Italian hadn’t competed in a race since January 23 and also skipped the Super-G in China to concentrate on the downhill.
Driving with a torn cruciate ligament, the 29-year-old serial winner had to admit defeat to 27-year-old Suter. The German Kira Weidle, who was so strong in training, just missed bronze as fourth. Suter is the first Swiss downhill Olympic champion since Dominique Gisin in Sochi in 2014.
Austria’s women, on the other hand, did not compete in any phase of the race for a medal, which was postponed by half an hour due to wind in the Yanqing National Alpine Center and was later interrupted for a long time after the bad fall of Frenchwoman Camille Cerutti, although they risked everything. After heavy snowfall over the weekend, none could really cope with the unconventional conditions on the Olympic course “The Rock”.
Hütter, for example, almost fell victim to their extreme inclinations in the upper part. Puchner admitted that the conditions also failed. Ramona Siebenhofer sounded similar given her 1.94 seconds behind the winner and only twelfth place. Tippler, who missed bronze by 3 hundredths in the Super-G and qualified internally for the downhill, also never reached the speed she had hoped for and ended up in 19th place, a massive 2.52 seconds behind. That was too much to just explain with her skiing, said the Styrian.
Source: Nachrichten
