Beaver Creek winner Marcel Hirscher and team mate Manuel Feller arrived in Val d’ Isere on Friday around 5 p. m. Austria’s “Athlete of the Year” had still been training at the Reiteralm until the last moment due to a lost day of his return trip from the USA to make up ground after his ankle injury.
The six-time overall World Cup winner was not unlucky enough to cancel the starting number draw in the evening because of strong winds for safety reasons,”I’m not uncomfortable. I need a little time anyway. Right now, I’m making two units a day. Once giant slalom, once slalom, that doesn’t make much sense, but I have to make up time,”Hirscher explained.
His team mate Feller said that this would probably not be necessary at all:”He has trained so much more than we have over the past few years that he doesn’t even notice that he has now trained a little less,”Feller suspected.
Whether Hirscher can continue like this after the giant slalom victory in the USA?”That was just a snapshot. It may well be that it is going to continue, but it may also be that at some point I will be presented with the bill for the missing training kilometres. I don’t know if and when this will happen, but it has to have an effect at some point,”believes the 28-year-old from Salzburg.
Returning to Val d’ Isere, however, could unleash new energy:”It is always a pleasure to come because this is my most successful mountain,”explains Hirscher,”I won the most and celebrated my greatest and first successes. For me, this is like a local mountain and it’s really tailor-made for me:” Of course, the unknown people are also the conditions for him. The slope is difficult and steep and under the fresh snow it’s icy:”I don’t know if I have the right set-up for it.”
Behind his slalom form there is a “big question mark”anyway, Hirscher said. Because of the change to the new giant slalom skis, he had neglected the slalom course in front of Beaver Creek. That’s why he only allowed himself a rest day after his return on Wednesday because of the jet lag, but on Thursday and Friday he wound down two slalom and two giant slalom units.
We can’t wait to see how Hirscher puts it all away:”There won’t be any sweating of honey down there,”he knows. Especially with the shoes a challenge is waiting because it is getting very cold. Daily maximum temperatures of minus 10 degrees Celsius are the order of the day.