Kriechmayr, a legendary encore in the descent on Vertigo. And the regrets are all blue ...

Cortina 2021: the Austrian is the new downhill world champion after having already triumphed in super-g. Mocked for a cent Sander, bronze in Feuz. Paris is fourth (ex aequo with Odermatt), after having dominated the race for three quarters, Inner sixth.

Sunday 14 February 2021 5 minutes reading time

The dream was to emulate Zeno Colò, 70 years after the exploits of the first and only blue able to win the descent of the world championships. It seemed the perfect day for Dominik Paris and "only" that damned central stretch between the Vertigine jump and the crossbar leading to the Ghedina jump was missing, to win the title of the queen race. It went badly for the Azzurri, at the foot of the podium with Domme fourth and Innerhofer sixth, in the Cortina descent that brought Vincent Kriechmayr back to the top of the world. A legendary double that of the Austrian on Vertigo, like Hermann Maier at Beaver Creek ''99 and Bode Miller at Bormio 2005. Gold in super-g with 7 cents over Romed Baumann, an encore downhill with just one hundredth of an advantage another German (other than World Championship for Germany with 3 medals in speed and with three different athletes), Andreas Sander, who was one of the expected outsiders even though he has never yet reached a World Cup podium. They started respectively with bibs 1 and 2, but little or nothing had an impact on a track prepared to say the least to perfection by the organization. In third place, 18 cents away from Kriechmayr, who literally made the difference in the four key corners of this anomalous (and discussed) track, is Beat Feuz who recovers over half a second from the Ghedina jump to the finish, but you have to settle for bronze like in Beaver Creek 2015 (and after the gold in Sankt Moritz 2017). Who signed the best time both in the upper part, up to the two approach curves to the Vertigine jump, and then again in the last 35 seconds of the race, is Dominik Paris: 4th place is very bad, at 65 cents from Kriechmayr, precisely because for three quarters of descent the blue ace was number 1 and with a margin. Domme, however, left over a second and a half to the winner (losing many tenths even from Feuz himself, just to have a reference) in that diagonal section which, in fact, decided the race and saw the exit between the another one of the big names, Matthias Mayer (the world championships remain cursed for the Carinthian, still dry in his career). Fourth ex aequo with a sumptuous Marco Odermatt, the best result of his downhill career (but many others will come due to the Swiss phenomenon). Sixth with 9 tenths of a gap, however, a great Christof Innerhofer: in practice he did not seem able to play an important result, but in the race he pulled out the maximum by really disputing a level descent. (updating)

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