Marcel Hirscher starts his fifth slalom victory in a row in Wengen on Sunday. The man from Salzburg would not only end his personal best performance from first places in the goal-scoring in one season (2011/12), but would be the first after Giorgio Rocca (2005/06) to lay such a series of slalom victories. Success would also be the first victory for Hirscher in Wengen.
In the slalom world cup, Adelboden followed Zagreb, everything is ready for the Austrian classics in Kitzbühel and Schladming after Wengen:”The slalom game is in full swing, nice that we are so strong,”Hirscher addressed the last two ÖSV double wins by him and Michael Matt as runners-up.
Success brings a lot of self-confidence, but Hirscher is not able to do anything on his own,”I can approach the next race a little more calmly, but it won’t get any easier. Every race starts at zero. And you never know what’s gonna happen. Now we’re lucky enough to have a hundredths of a second on our side, but that’s something you have to work for,”he said about the sometimes scarce successes.
Henrik Kristoffersen starts the next attempt to defeat Hirscher and win himself. The Norwegian has competed in a total of eleven races of the season, has always been among the best nine and in the slalom alone twice in second and third place on three occasions. He won Wengen in 2016 and 2017, but Austria has been waiting for the first slalom victory in the Swiss Alpine Village since Manfred Pranger in 2009.
The piste conditions are likely to be similar to those in Zagreb and Adelboden, which will make Matt and Hirscher hot again “Michi is a killer in my eyes. If he sees a chance to take the lead, he’ll take it. A real matt”, praised ÖSV men’s sports director Andreas Puelacher most recently the youngest of the Flirscher Matt brothers.
Hirscher, Matt and Manuel Feller (season best performances 4th, 5th) are allowed to plan for the Olympic slalom. Marco Schwarz (9th, 12th, 13th, 14th) and Christian Hirschbühl (11th, 12th, 9th) will be competing for the fourth ÖSV starting place in Yongpyong/Pyeongchang. Marc Digruber would have to ignite the turbo if he wanted to get involved.
In the combined slalom, Schwarz already familiarized himself with the piste conditions and, despite starting number 37, managed to reach the fourth-best time.”I hope that the piste on Sunday is better, then it will fit in,”said the Carinthian, referring to the difficult conditions. The organizers wanted to approach the event with water and salt, good sub-zero temperatures at night should help.
Schwarz is confident that he will now be able to move forward again in the special slalom “The season is not very good, not bad at all. There are passages in there where I ride with the best. In practice I ride with Michi. The implementation in the race has not yet worked,”said the 22-year-old.
In the beginning, his expectations were a bit too high:”Now I can see it a bit more relaxed, you can’t force anything. Now I’m going to try it again via the “Looseness”:”For the Olympic qualification he has three more races”. I want to take advantage of the three races to present myself well and be there.”