(Beijing) Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt has dominated the giant slalom this season and is now the Olympic champion in this discipline.
Posted at 6:18 a.m.
The 24-year-old Odermatt braved snow and poor visibility to win the men’s giant slalom event at the Beijing Games on Sunday.
“I really risked everything in the second run because I didn’t just want a medal, I wanted the gold medal,” Odermatt said. It’s hard because you can lose everything, but today it paid off. »
It was the first time since the start of the Beijing Games that snow had fallen during an alpine ski race. Weather conditions forced the postponement of the second descent by 75 minutes.
“It was a difficult day, with the conditions and with such a long wait between the two runs,” explained Odermatt. It was over five hours for me. It took so long to rethink everything and it was hard to stay focused. I tried to sleep for a few minutes between the two descents. »
Odermatt handled the conditions and the wait well — and a mistake on the first run — to post a combined time of 2:09.35.
Slovenian Zan Kranjec won the silver medal, 19 hundredths of a second behind the Swiss, and Frenchman Mathieu Faivre, the world champion, won the bronze medal.
Canadian Erik Read finished 13thand rung with a time of 2:12.44. His compatriot Trevor Philp finished the event in 24and position (2: 19.08).
The skiers had to slide and practice on artificial snow before the real snow fell on the Yanqing Alpine Ski Center on Saturday. The second women’s training run was canceled due to weather conditions on Sunday.
This season, Odermatt has won four of the five World Cup events in giant slalom. He sits at the top of the classification of the discipline and the general classification.