World Cup in Val d’Isère
Ski world champion Schmid comes ninth in his comeback
Alexander Schmid came ninth in the giant slalom in Val d’Isère. photo
© Marco Trovati/AP
Ski racer Alexander Schmid makes an impressive return to the snowstorm in Val d’Isère. The Swiss Marco Odermatt triumphs again. An outsider from Andorra comes third.
Ski world champion Alexander Schmid finished in the top ten on his comeback in the Alpine World Cup. The Allgäu native took first place in the giant slalom Val d’Isère ninth place.
Schmid won World Cup gold in the parallel competition last season. At the beginning of March he suffered a torn cruciate ligament in his left knee during training.
Despite difficult conditions with increasingly heavy snowfall, the Swiss high-flyer Marco Odermatt was once again unstoppable at the giant slalom in France. The overall World Cup winner of the last two winters and Olympic champion in Beijing 2022 triumphed with almost a second lead over the Austrian Marco Schwarz. Joan Verdu from Andorra came third, completely unexpectedly.
Given the long injury break, this placement was “madness” and a “huge gift” for him, Schmid told ARD. In the second run, where visibility was not optimal due to the snowfall, he found the right “mixture of accelerating and driving stable”. However, Odermatt is once again in a league of its own, the 29-year-old explained: “Hats off!”
Schmid’s teammate Anton Grammel finished 23rd. Fabian Gratz and Jonas Stockinger didn’t make it to the second round. There is another slalom in Val d’Isère on Sunday (9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m./ARD and Eurosport).