An alpine weekend to forget

The ÖSV women’s team is in shock as it has to be one of their strongest sprinting runners for the winter right at the start of the season: Nicole Schmidhofer tore her cruciate ligament and collateral ligament in her fall in the World Cup. Downhill world in Val d’Isere on Friday. left knee, as confirmed by an MRI at the Hochrum clinic near Innsbruck.

The 31-year-old will be operated on in a few days and will therefore be out for the entire season. In the shadow of the injury, the ÖSV women did not have much to gain at the weekend: Ramona Siebenhofer took sixth place on Saturday in the relegation (winner Sofia Goggia) for only place in the top 10. On Sunday in the Super-G (winner Ester Ledecka) Tamara Tippler was ÖSV’s fourteenth best lady, the worst result since 1997, when Alexandra Meissnitzer was only 16th in Vail: “It was not so easy to collapse after the crash surpassed by Nici.

It’s always a strange feeling when a teammate falls down, ”Siebenhofer said on Saturday. At Tippler, there was also a preparation deteriorated by a corona disease (with five weeks without training), she felt quite empty on Sunday after two training sessions and three races in five days.

Partial success: Best Giant Slalom result

The Austrian men’s team in the Alta Badia giant slalom (winner Alexis Pinturault) did not knock down any trees, it was not a surprise: it is known to be the problematic red-white-red discipline. In the end, Stefan Brennsteiner achieved by far the best result of the RTL season with ninth place. After finishing eighth at halftime, Roland Leitinger was just 22nd, just behind Marco Schwarz.

A little more surprising, however, that the local sprinters had such a hard time Saturday in Val Gardena on the descent (winner Aleksander Aamodt Kilde). “I wanted to apply pressure before the ski was even on the ground,” said Max Franz, annoyed after finishing ninth. Matthias Mayer wasn’t satisfied with 10th place either: “I knew from the start that this wasn’t exactly my place. Here I always have to go beyond my limits to be fast ”. The worm inside is obviously with Vincent Kriechmayr (13th): “I’m there in the corners”. After the material change, the Austrian from Alta apparently still struggles on the straights. .

The men will continue today (10 am and 1:30 pm / ORF 1 live) with a slalom in Alta Badia. For the women, however, it is already a Christmas break, the next races are the Semmering (December 28 and 29).