KITZBUEHEL, Austria, Jan 23 : Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt began the Hahnenkamm weekend in style with a narrow victory in Friday’s World Cup super-G, laying down another marker before next month’s Olympics.
Odermatt’s run down the iconic Streif course was not perfect but no one could match his 142kph top speed as he won by 0.03 seconds from young compatriot Franjo von Allmen.
Von Allmen looked aghast as Odermatt flashed across the finishing line to take the lead and claim his eighth win of a dominant season that looks almost certain to end in a fifth successive overall World Cup title for the 28-year-old.
It was Odermatt’s second career win at Kitzbuehel after also winning the super-G last year and on Saturday he will try and win the prized downhill for the first time.
“I had a very good start and a very good finish but in the middle it was not exactly how I planned it but still somehow I managed to let the skis go,” Odermatt said.
“I lost definitely less energy than last year (in winning the super-G) so hopefully I’m ready for tomorrow.”
Austrian fans crowded in at the finish area were celebrating when Stefan Babinsky went into the lead but those roars were premature as he ultimately had to settle for third place just ahead of teammate Raphael Haaser.
Norway’s Adrian Smiseth Sejersted provided the morning’s most spectacular action, somehow staying upright after a huge mistake and landing out of control on one ski.
Remarkably he finished fifth.
Twenty-four skiers were within one second of Odermatt’s winning time but the Swiss again proved why he will be the man to beat in the speed disciplines at the Olympics.
Von Allmen will definitely be a threat for Saturday’s downhill and in the Olympic races in Bormio.
“Yesterday I went to bed with the mind to go for gold today but to lose to Marco, another Swiss guy, by just a couple of hundredths, I’ll take that,” he said.
“Tomorrow we start from zero.”
Odermatt now leads the super-G standings by 158 points from Austria’s Vincent Kriechmayr, who was seventh on Friday.
In the overall standings he has a colossal 587-point advantage over Brazil’s slalom specialist Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, who will race in Sunday’s slalom in Kitzbuehel.
