Marco Odermatt hadn’t even started this World Cup descent from Courchevel when the messengers at the finish line were already announcing his deed. Cowbells rang out, Swiss fans crowded into the main stand, wearing replicas of the cheese-yellow suits that the Swiss had swept down the alpine slopes in since 1992. Or was it original? It certainly set the tone. Shortly thereafter, Marco Odermatt performed a descent worthy of the ancestors, the Lehmanns, Kernens, Accolas and so on. Maybe she was even better.
At least nobody in Courchevel was faster on Sunday. Odermatt crouched perfectly over the Eclipse slope, carving smoothly on the edges. Nobody can do it so neatly, nobody makes the heavy look so easy. On the descent, Odermatt had never managed to win with this noble technique, now he exploited his role as the second biggest favourite: In contrast to the Norwegian Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, he didn’t manage a very good run, but the “best run of my life”. The current overall World Cup winner, Olympic champion in giant slalom, the present and future of alpine sports, is now also world champion, he was actually missing this form of address. Odermatt, just to remind you, is 25 years old.
“The best ride of my life”: Marco Odermatt rushes to downhill gold in Courchevel.
(Photo: Alain Grosclaude/Getty Images)
The men’s downhill World Cup was the “merciless slaughter” that Christian Schwaiger, the head coach of the German men, had prophesied perhaps a touch too martially. Odermatt and Kilde, who shared almost all speed wins this winter, drove perfectly or almost perfectly. This time, the role of surprise guest on the podium was given to Canadian Cameron Alexander. Behind them, within a twitch: Marco Schwarz, Super-G World Champion James Crawford, Maxence Muzaton, Florian Schieder, Miha Hrobat, Dominik Paris, and, with an eternity of 26 hundredths of a second behind bronze, Thomas Dreßen in tenth place.
Dreßen smiled bittersweetly at the camera as he crossed the finish line. After all, the mood was so good that he animated the grandstand to make the La Ola gesture; he threw the ski poles in the air, but no one joined in except for a few bystanders. What could be derived from this, for the 29-year-old and the German Ski Association?
Dreßen takes two painkillers so that he can drive at all
Dreßen’s approach to this World Cup had material ready for several winters. After nearly 1,000 days of World Cup competition, he finished eighth in the Lake Louise downhill after serious shoulder, hip and knee surgery. He then tried to copy the best in the industry instead of trusting his strengths: the round, longer ideal track on which Dreßen can pick up as much speed as the best. He recently linked a series of unfavorable actions, injured his thigh in Gröden, fell in Kitzbühel and most recently in training, was “struck down” by a gastrointestinal infection. And the teammates who had represented Dreßen in his absence from time to time at the top of the world? Seemed more concerned with himself than with the competition.
“If a team has nothing to lose,” Dreßen said before leaving, “then we do.”
One would have liked to see what a dresser without bruises in knees and shoulders would have produced on Sunday on the “Eclipse” (in English: darkness), on a descent that “is predestined for Tom”, as DSV head coach Schwaiger complained. So his flagship driver could only raise the skill that his battered body provided him with. Because his shoulder hurt, he was only able to push off to a limited extent at the flat start, later he lost little time on Odermatt, but “that was just not possible today,” said Dreßen. When the adrenaline had left his body, he hobbled through the finish line, sat down in the snow, massaged his knee, and hobbled to the next interview. If you consider that he “had to take two different, very strong painkillers so that I can drive at all,” said Dreßen, you can imagine how he is doing right now. That sounded neither promising nor very sustainable. However, Dreßen insisted that he derived a lot of positive things for the future from the past few weeks: “I’m back on the way to where I want to go and where I think I belong.” So to the top.
The teammates? Were far away from that on Sunday. Romed Baumann also likes descents like the one in Courchevel, but in the past few days in training he had messed up a bit with the equipment set-up and left a lot of power, he admitted after his 19th place. Andreas Sander, Cortina’s World Cup runner-up, most recently ninth in Super-G, made the same lapse on Sunday in the race – with “zero grip” it was enough for 29th place. Josef Ferstl, meanwhile, puzzled why he was in rank without any major mistakes 27 had blown. In any case, his World Cup was “miserable”, in the Super-G he was eliminated early.
“Sometimes,” Wolfgang Maier recently said, the sports director in the DSV, you have to sharpen the athletes’ senses again; tell them “that you have to do everything you can to perform”. One could also read it in such a way that the selection, which has been successful together over the years, is just a little lacking in momentum.
There remains hope in the DSV for the second week of the World Cup, for the days of the technicians, when there is just more train in it. And then there was the realization that Kira Weidle crept up after the downhill, which she finished in eighth place, the best DSV result of the first week of the World Cup alongside Emma Aicher’s eighth place in the combination. Her departure, Weidle said, was “really good and committed”. She’d just wasted an odd amount of time upstairs, like many favourites. Because the sun had softened the slope? In any case, sometimes you get nothing in this sport even if you do (almost) everything right.