There were long interruptions after racers number four and twenty. It was almost three and a half hours after the first racer had started that Kriechmayr’s first win of the season was official. “It was a good performance,” he said. “I’m very proud of it.” He had never stood on the podium in Gröden before, and shared it with Kjetil Jansrud (NOR) and Thomas Dressen (GER).
Kriechmayr always had fair play uppermost in his thoughts in a race – “a tough period of hanging around” – that came within a whisker of being abandoned. “It was an incredibly difficult race for the organisers as well. It goes without saying that I’m glad it turned out like it did.”
That the ladies and men of the Fischer racing team were unable to record any more successes this weekend was due primarily to the bad weather. The Downhill in Gröden and both the ladies’ speed events in Val d’Isère had to be cancelled.
A disappointment for Ramona Siebenhofer in particular who, in the only training run, produced the fastest time on her Fischer skis. Nicole Schmidhofer, who was fifth, would certainly also have been up there competing for a podium in the Downhill and Super G.
On Sunday, the men also had to contend with adverse weather in the Giant Slalom in Alta Badia. The best Fischer racers were Stefan Brennsteiner, who finished 21st, and Roland Leitinger in 23rd.
