Kilde seals World Cup downhill title; Kriechmayr wins final race
Canada's Jack Crawford places 7th; Shiffrin extends lead atop women's standings
Aleksander Aamodt Kilde edged Olympic champion Beat Feuz in their tight duel to win the World Cup season-long downhill title on Wednesday in Courchevel, France.
Kilde's fourth place in the World Cup Finals downhill proved enough to maintain his narrow points lead over Feuz, who finished third, 0.54 seconds behind race winner Vincent Kriechmayr.
Kilde's girlfriend, American Mikaela Shiffrin, increased her lead over Petra Vlhova in a close race for the overall title by winning Wednesday's women's downhill.
Kriechmayr led at every checkpoint down the new, steep Eclipse course at Courchevel to be 0.34 faster than Marco Odermatt, who sealed his first overall World Cup title.
Jack Crawford was the top Canadian, finishing 1.59 seconds back of Kriechmayr for seventh place. Cam Alexander finished 22nd, and 3.70 behind the winner.
WATCH | Crawford finishes 7th in downhill at alpine finals:
Odermatt was already sure this week to win the giant crystal globe trophy that is the sport's biggest prize. By finishing ahead of his closest challenger Kilde, the 24-year-old Swiss padded his lead further beyond the uncatchable 300-point mark with three races left this week. Neither skis in slalom which ends the season Sunday.
WATCH | Kriechmayr wins final downhill of the season:
The pre-race tension was instead about Kilde trying to maintain his 23-point lead in the downhill standings and deny Feuz a World Cup record-tying fifth straight title in the marquee discipline.
Quick recovery
Feuz opted to go first wearing the No. 1 bib down the steep 3.1-kilometre hill and posted a target that Kilde, starting minutes later as No. 3, could not match.
Kilde was unbalanced landing the long jump soon after the start, then recovered to lead by 0.07 approaching the flatter, twisting final section. He lost almost four-tenths of a second to the technically correct Feuz.
On seeing his time in the finish area Kilde smiled and opened his arms wide in a gesture toward Feuz, who was seeking to match Austrian great Franz Klammer's five career downhill titles.
Kilde ended with 13 points more than Feuz and added the downhill title to the crystal globe trophy he already secured in super-G, which is raced Thursday.
Kriechmayr, the 2021 world championships gold medalist, got his 11th career World Cup race win and his fifth in downhill.
Shiffrin scores rare downhill win
Meanwhile, Shiffrin had barely raced downhill this season — two World Cup events in December and then last month's Beijing Olympics. Her best result was 18th.
She put down a clean run on the new Eclipse course, stopping the clock in 1:27.00 to earn the victory and 100 World Cup points. Vlhova finished out of the scoring places in 16th.
WATCH | Shiffrin wins downhill in Courchevel:
After seeing her time in the finish area, Shiffrin put her right hand to her mouth in disbelief. Her 74th career victory in the World Cup was only her third in downhill.
Shiffrin is looking for a fourth career overall title. She now leads Vlhova by 156 points with only three races left this week.
She will be favoured to pad her lead Thursday, and maybe even secure the overall title, when the other speed discipline, the super-G, is raced.
The women's title went to Sofia Goggia despite her 12th-place finish. Goggia's closest rival, Olympic champion Corinne Suter, finished only 19th. It was the Italian's third career downhill trophy.
The course seemed to suit Shiffrin. It used the flatter, more technical lower sections of the Eclipse hill than the longer course raced by the men, proving to be a balanced race with few sections to find extra speed or make mistakes.
Shiffrin did just enough to finish 0.10 seconds faster than Christine Scheyer and Joana Haehlen, who tied for second place. Even Lara Gut-Behrami in fifth place was only 0.16 seconds behind in 1:27.16.
Marie-Michèle Gagnon of Lac-Etchemin, Que., was the lone Canadian competitior and placed 21st of 27 finishers in 1:28.45.
You can watch live action from the FIS World Cup Alpine Skiing Finals on CBCSports.ca and the CBC Sports app.
Coverage continues on Thursday with the super-G events, with the women's race at 4 a.m. ET and the men's event at 5:30 a.m. ET.
A full schedule of events is below.
Full schedule
- Thursday: Women's super-G (4 a.m. ET), men's super-G (5:30 a.m. ET)
- Friday: Mixed team parallel (11 a.m. ET)
- Saturday: Men's giant slalom (3 a.m. ET), women's slalom (4:30 a.m. ET), men's giant slalom (6 a.m. ET), women's slalom (7:30 a.m. ET)
- Sunday: Women's GS (3 a.m. ET), men's slalom (4:30 a.m. ET)
With files from CBC Sports
