(Kvitfjell) Three weeks after their last confrontation, the Swiss ski genius Marco Odermatt and the French revelation of the season Cyprien Sarrazin meet again on Saturday in Norway for the penultimate descent of the winter, a race which could prove decisive for the globe of the specialty.
The duel between the two athletes is the attraction of the winter. If they had never won in downhill in the World Cup at the start of the season, since the end of December “Odi” and “Cyp” have shared all the victories in the premier discipline of skiing and find themselves neck and neck in the ranking for the small globe.
After seven descents, the Swiss (two victories, six podiums in the specialty this season) is at the top of the discipline ranking with 516 points, only six ahead of the Frenchman (510 points, three victories, five podiums) .
They will be able to try to gain valuable points at Kvitfjell in northern Norway, the last descent before the finals in Saalbach (Austria) at the end of March.
Excluding a disaster scenario with a fall or a huge underperformance, it is very unlikely that we will know the winner of the globe on Saturday. A victory worth 100 points, for that Odermatt would have to win with at least 95 points ahead of Sarrazin to be uncatchable in Saalbach.
But both skiers can take serious options before the finals, even if the track seems better suited to pure downhillers like the Italian Dominik Paris (four times winner at Kvitfjell). For their part, Odermatt has never done better than 13e downhill while Sarrazin has never started there.
To stay awake ”
The perspective of the globe of descent? “It’s a small issue that is there,” Cyprien Sarrazin admitted Thursday after the first official training (he finished 7eOdermatt 23e). “It’s good, it keeps me wide awake for the end of the season. »
Because after the madness of January, the series of “classics” of the circuit (Bormio, Wengen, Kitzbühel) and the significant media requests, the downhillers find themselves in the calm of Norway, far from the hordes of Swiss or Austrian supporters.
Above all, after three weeks without hanging a bib, “you have to manage to re-mobilize yourself, to regain intensity,” explains Sarrazin. “That’s the challenge this week, to motivate yourself to go and do some great races here. »
After his first victory in December in Bormio, Sarrazin became the new hero of French skiing by winning the super-G in Wengen two weeks later and then achieving an extraordinary double in downhill in Kitzbühel.
Often just behind or just in front of him, Odermatt has already won ten victories this winter, mainly in giants where he has been undefeated for almost a year, and is heading straight towards his third big crystal globe.
In the general classification, he already has more than twice as many points (1506) as his runner-up Sarrazin (684) in a season marked by the falls and premature ends of the season of big names like Marco Schwarz or Aleksander Aamodt Kilde.
After Norway, Odermatt and Sarrazin will head to the United States to race the giants on the program at Palisades Tahoe and Aspen.