GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany, 31 January 2004 — Switzerland’s Didier Cuche won the men’s World Cup skiing downhill here yesterday ahead of American Daron Rahlves and Austria’s Stephan Eberharter.
Cuche’s victory — the fifth of his career — will have boosted the struggling Swiss team who were once a major power in skiing.
Switzerland’s first World Cup win this season however gave Cuche the chance to vent some frustration at what he regards as the “unprofessional” attitude of his national federation.
“It was time we Swiss won one,” said the 29-year-old Cuche who won in 1min 59.49sec to beat Rahlves by 0.08sec.
“The perfect race maybe isn’t possible, but I had a good run. “My confidence is back,” added Cuche who criticized the team’s use of last year’s ski suits.
“The problem since the start of the season are our ski suits. I’m disappointed with Swiss-ski (the Swiss ski federation). I don’t understand their unprofessional attitude.
“They’ve said we haven’t been aggressive of motivated enough. But since Bormio we’d been using the same ski suits as last season — so it doesn’t surprise me that we’re back in the running. Both Eberharter and Rahlves admitted the Garmisch run is one of the hardest downhills on the circuit.
Eberharter beat Cuche and Rahlves on the Kandahar course last year but admitted he found the going tough.
Olympic champion Fritz Strobl was fourth ahead of fellow Austrian Hermann Maier.
Austria’s slalom racer Benjamin Raich, who does not race in downhills, kept the overall lead in the World Cup.
Meanwhile Norway’s Lasse Kjus will miss the rest of the 2004 season after a knee operation. Kjus is currently second in the overall World Cup standings behind Raich.
Riesch Stuns Favorites for Maiden Win
German teenager Maria Riesch shut out the favorites to win a downhill race yesterday for a maiden World Cup win in only her second season.
The 19-year-old, fastest in final training, locked into a tight tuck down the Krummholz course, the longest on the women’s tour at 3.1 km, to clock a winning time of one minute and 39.30 seconds.
Italian Isolde Kostner looked set for her first win since November 2001 after battling back from injury, but had to settle for second, 0.46 seconds off the pace, while defending champion Renate Goetschl of Austria was third on 1:39.78. The race, however, was marred by a high-speed crash by American Kirsten Lee Clark, who careered into the safety netting after landing off-balance from the first jump with her legs ripped apart into the splits.
Clark was airlifted to hospital where it was discovered that she had broken her right arm and torn cruciate ligaments in her left knee. Riesch’s sensational win confirms her status as Germany’s best hope for an overall World Cup crown since Katja Seizinger’s reign of domination in the 1990s. The self-confessed soap opera addict from Garmisch-Partenkirchen is one of only a handful of racers to compete and score in each of Alpine skiing’s four disciplines.
Her first win was only a matter of time as she had placed second in the super-G in Cortina earlier this month, third in the downhill in St. Moritz and also came fourth in a giant slalom in Maribor and 13th in a slalom in Megeve.
Riesch, a towering 1.81 meters tall, said she was pleased to have finally converted her training performances into a win.
