(Kvitfjell) Cameron Alexander ended Canada’s eight-year wait to return to winning the men’s downhill World Cup on Friday. He shared victory with Swiss rival Niels Hintermann when the pair stunned the season’s top title contenders.
Posted at 9:40 a.m.
Updated at 10:21 a.m.
Alexander, with bib noh 39, equaled Hintermann’s time of one minute 44.42 seconds. Sunny conditions on the Olympiabakken course allowed several lower-ranked skiers to finish in the top 10.
No Canadian has won a World Cup downhill since Erik Guay, the 2011 world downhill champion, triumphed on the same course in Norway in 2014.
“To win in the same place as someone like Erik…to be at the same level as him in the same race, it’s crazy, phenomenal,” exclaimed North Vancouver native Alexander, who called the now-retired Guay a of his idols. He obviously showed great talent throughout his career in this sport and he was someone I looked up to in my journey as a skier. »
Alexander executed his run more than half an hour after Hintermann became the first to beat the best downhill timer.
Hintermann set off on the track with bib noh 17, past most favorites, and he edged Austria’s Matthias Mayer by 0.12 seconds to claim his second career win.
Olympic downhill champion Beat Feuz, a teammate of Hintermann, finished fourth by 19 hundredths of a second, just ahead of Aleksander Aamodt Kilde.
” It’s incredible. He did a really amazing job,” Hintermann said after Alexander equaled his time.
Alexander’s performance means Kilde remains top of the downhill standings for the season. With another downhill on Saturday and a season-ending event in France the only races remaining, the former Norwegian overall champion leads Feuz by three points. Mayer is 28 points behind in third place.
Kilde remains the only rider to have won multiple World Cup downhills this season. He has never won the downhill title before. Feuz has won the Crystal Globe in each of the past four seasons.
When many thought the race was over, Alexander used his knowledge of the course to create an upset.
After failing to earn his spot on the Canadian team for the Beijing Olympics last month, Alexander traveled to Kvitfjell to compete in three sprint races on the second-tier European Cup circuit. level — and successfully. He won one downhill, was fifth in another and placed second in a super-G.
“I just gave everything I had,” Alexander said of his race. I knew I had the right speed here, so all I had to do was try to get the most out of it. »
His only previous top-10 finish on the World Cup circuit came on the same course in Norway, when he finished 10and downhill two years ago.
Hintermann’s victory follows downhill podiums in Italy in December, when he finished third in Val Gardena and Bormio in the space of 10 days, his only other top-three finishes in the discipline.
His victory on Friday came more than five years after his first, in a combined event in Wengen. Hintermann had led the decisive descent when heavy snowfall deprived the favorites of any chance to improve his time.