Yule has now chalked up three wins this season already. “Winning in Kitzbühel is just unbelievable,” said the Swiss skier who says he wants “to experience a lot more emotions like that”. He will have the chance to do so as early as next Tuesday in the Night Race in Schladming.
While Yule continues to carve a wave of success, Kriechmayr regained his top form on the world’s most demanding downhill course. Naturally enough, the Upper Austrian wanted “to show once and for all what I can do. I managed to do that pretty well.”
What cost him victory was perhaps a jump over the Hausberg Edge that was just a little too long. “I was really only concentrating on getting over it and then I overshot by that one metre, otherwise I’d have been able to pick up a little more speed.” In the end, a mere 22 hundredths separated the Fischer racer (tied with Beat Feuz) from the winner Matthias Mayer.
Not just Kriechmayr, who had already caught the eye with his sixth place in the Super G on Friday, but Fischer athlete Bryce Bennett also skied into the spotlight on the Streif. Starting with bib no. 1, the American finished a very creditable eighth, saying afterwards, “I’ll remember that half-way lead for the rest of my life.” Matteo Marsaglia finished twelfth ahead of Steven Nyman, while Max Franz came in 15th.
While the men were battling it out in Kitzbühel, the ladies’ World Cup troupe travelled to Bansko, Bulgaria. There, Ramona Siebenhofer achieved the best results for Fischer with a ninth and a twelfth place in the two Downhills. In the Super G on Sunday, Nicole Schmidhofer, hampered by illness, ranked 13th.
