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Tuesday,
06.02.2001
Race Report
St Anton, women’s downhill
Austrian dominates women’s downhill.
The Austrian women’s team who
only clinched a silver medal until
now celebrated a superb comeback in
the women’s downhill in taking
all three places on the podium as
it did two years ago in Vail –
in fact two of the three medal winners
are the same.
Michaela Dorfmeister, who won here
her first downhill five years ago,
dominated all the other favorites
after quite an aggressive run. She
beat by 14/100 of a second the Vail's
World Champion, Renate Goetschl, and
by 17/100 the young Selina Heregger.
At Vail it was Goetschl who came ahead
of her team-mate, the fastest at the
intermediate time.
The Italian favorite Isolde Kostner,
was a disappointing 5th with a delay
of 80/100. Kostner was quite handicapped
by the bad visibility when she was
on course.
Because of a terrible crash of Canada’s
Emily Brydon, who torn ligaments at
left right knee, the course was on
hold for almost twenty minutes, During
this time, it was quite sunny then
clouds covered the sky as top-favorites
such as Isolde went on course.
“I tried my best, but I didn’t
see enough to take full risks”
said the skier from Ortisei, “I’m
really disappointing because I felt
quite strong and confident after my
good result in Super-G. Now I have
to concentrate more on the downhill
World Cup and on the next Olympics
at Salt Lake City.”
France’s Régine Cavagnoud,
12th at 1.68 second and Mélanie
Turgeon, who lost almost two seconds
also belong to the group of unlucky
skiers of the day.
It's an impressive comeback, that
“ Dorfi” did in this downhill,
a discipline in which she won her
very first race during the 1995/96
season here in St.Anton.
The 2000 giant slalom World Cup winner
wasn't one of the top contenders after
some discrete training runs. This
season, she didn’t reach one
podium in that specialty, yet won
a Super-G and a GS earlier this winter.
In Super-G too, she finished far behind
the leaders last week, but she was
able to find back all her momentum
in the right time.
" On race days, it's something
totally different for me” she
said. “ I knew that I could have
my word to say today because the snow
conditions were fine for my material
who are running very fast on this
kind of warm snow” she added.
“The training runs didn’t
go so well, but I never gave up. I’m
used to these kinds of unexpected
returns. My career had a lot of ups
and downs. It's a big day for my family
and my fans who have supported me
so strongly for years.."
Two years ago, Michaela missed the
Olympic gold medal for 1/100 at Nagano
in the Super-G won by US Picabo Street.
The skier from the Vienna region will
also fight for another medal in the
coming giant slalom.
Renate Goetschl was not too disappointed
with her second place after her bad
luck in the Super-G and in the combined
in which she crashed..
" I never lost confidence and
I fought hard for this race. The conditions
were extremely difficult because of
the bad visibility . The slope was
already very rough when I came down.
The way I see it is that I won the
silver medal and I didn't loose the
gold medal".
The next women’s event, the slalom,
is planned for Wednesday evening.
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