Kilde & Goggia Win In Val Gardena & St Moritz
Aleksander Aamodt Kilde (NOR) reigns over the downhill field with his third win of the season.. After the super-G was canceled Friday due to weather, the men of the World Cup tour retook the downhill slopes in Val Gardena and a familiar name led the pack.
Aleksander Aamodt Kilde (NOR) utilized his trademark powerful skiing to outpace the field and capture his third victory of the season. The Norwegian has won three of the four downhill races so far in the 2022-23 Audi FIS World Cup season. Kilde executed a clean run to post a time of 2:02.35, comfortably 0.35 ahead of second. Kilde remains atop the downhill standings and is still in line to challenge for the overall title. The Norwegian will try to pick up points in giant slalom at Alta Badia next. It is the 34th career podium for Kilde as he improves upon his disappointing fifth place finish in the downhill on the shorter course on Thursday. It is the seventh time he reached the podium in Val Gardena.
“It is amazing. I love to ski here. At the start, hearing the crowd shouting and the weather today was amazing. It is one of my favorite places to be,” said Kilde.
The rest of the standings were full of surprises. Johan Clarey (FRA) improved upon his fourth-place finish on Friday with a gliding performance to take the second spot. Mattia Casse (ITA) came through to fill the last podium spot in his home country.
“To have all the oldest guy (Clarey) that has been with us for so many years and a new guy (Casse) on the podium who has been fighting for so many years and been through some terrible times, it is amazing,” said Kilde.
It was the tenth career podium for the evergreen Clarey, and just the third for the French skier since 2021. He is still chasing his first World Cup victory.
“I tried my best, but I made a lot of mistakes today because my skis were really fast. I believed I could win but I am behind a monster (laughs). So maybe tonight I will be happy but now I am a little disappointed,” said Clarey.
The 41-year-old has no plans of slowing down.
“I am still having fun and I don’t know how I can be so fast at this age. It is not easy, the stress and everything in mind, it is not easy to push hard. Today I managed it and hopefully I can do it again in the next races,” said Clarey.
The battle for third behind Clarey was thrilling. Coming from late in the field with the 27th start position, Casse was ecstatic with his performance.
“I feel very, very good. I am in good condition and enjoying the new skis. I try my best in training every day and in the races. Now I get my first podium, so I am very, very happy,” said Casse.
It is the first time Casse claimed a coveted podium spot. Overall leader Marco Odermatt (SUI) held third for a moment but ended tied for seventh with Travis Ganong (USA). It is the first time the Swiss superstar failed to podium in his eight races this season. Adrien Theaux (FRA) used a late charge from the 32nd start position to take fourth. James Crawford (CAN) had a great ski to finish fifth. Cyprien Sarrazin (FRA) ended a shocking sixth from way back in the 61st start position. Thursday’s downhill winner Vincent Kriechmayr (AUT) settled for 26th after a shaky start.
In St Moritz twenty-four hours after breaking her hand and being airlifted to hospital for surgery, Italy's Sofia Goggia was back in a familiar place: the top of a World Cup downhill podium.
"Yesterday it was broken, today it was already fixed," Goggia said after she won her third downhill race of the season in St. Moritz on Saturday ahead of Slovenia's Ilka Stuhec, with Germany's Kira Weidle claiming third.
Goggia raced with a plate and nine screws inserted in the swollen left hand that she fractured in two places on Friday, and also had makeshift holes cut into her glove. She still skied a typically aggressive run on the full-length Corviglia course and won the race by 0.43 seconds, her 11th victory in the last 16 World Cup downhill races she has competed in.
"I couldn't push at the start gate and this is why I didn't have the gap of the training runs, but half a second is enough," she said of the victory margin. "Also one hundredth of a second is enough."
Goggia was taken by helicopter to Milan for surgery after Friday's race and it was questionable whether she could even participate on Saturday, let alone win the race.
"I'm really happy, I'm really grateful because it was not guaranteed at all that I could be at the start gate today," she said.
"I really understand that it was a bit risky, but I said to myself that after Beijing (when she recovered from a knee injury to win silver in the 2022 Olympic downhill), I could endure everything and this is exactly what I did."
After the foggy, snowy downhill on Friday, Saturday's race took place under blue skies and bright sunshine, with racers enjoying perfect conditions in the two-time Olympic host resort. Stuhec, the double downhill world champion from 2017 and 2019, showed she still has plenty left in the tank at age 32 after coming second and reaching her first World Cup podium in nearly four years.
"I was actually surprised when I saw the time in the finish because I had a feeling that I am everywhere else than where I imagined," she said.
Weidle, who struggled in the poor conditions on Friday when she finished 24th, took the early lead with bib No. 6 and reached her first podium of the season in third place.
"Today was way, way better than yesterday so I'm very happy that I could switch my mind from yesterday to today," she said. "Today was a new day, a new chance, a new me."
American superstar Mikaela Shiffrin backed up Friday's sixth place by finishing fourth, earning more valuable World Cup points in her chase for the overall crystal globe while showing that she can be a downhill threat.
"I just tried to be strong and tried to be in my tuck as much as I could, so I'm really happy," a delighted Shiffrin said.
It was an unhappy day for Swiss skiers on home snow, meanwhile, with Joana Haehlen the best of the locals in ninth place, while Friday's winner Elena Curtoni of Italy finished eighth.
