Marcel Hirscher started well into the Olympic Games in South Korea. After the shortened and defused combined downhill run, the Salzburg driver is 12th behind Thomas Dreßen from Germany by 1.32 seconds. Marco Schwarz is also good in the race (1.74). Behind the Norwegian Aksel Lund Svindal Matthias Mayer was third (0.13) and Vincent Kriechmayr was seven (0.72).
Due to strong wind in the upper part of the race, the descent to Super-G-Start was moved down and was only 1:20 minutes long. The slalom (from 07:00 a. m. CET) was therefore also shortened by ten goals. In addition, the descent had been “diverted”a little bit during the jumps, the so-called blue wind line was used. To the displeasure of many. The speed pilots would have preferred to have had their full jumps, for the technicians, who were inexperienced on long battens, it was improvised, this had never been trained.
“With number two, I’m sure it’s not funny with all the wrap-around. It’s a bit difficult for me to understand, but well,”Hirscher said, who only felt the wind stronger at the start,”Then it was okay. But I’ve gotten a little bit of stress that I’ve even gotten to the start, because the gondola has been shifted back by three gears because of the wind, because the wind is quite good at the top.”
Schwarz was satisfied with his departure management:”I got the best of it. It would have been cool if the jumps had gone. I didn’t take a good look at the wind line because I expected that the jumps would work. But it wasn’t much different, that’s already gone,”said the Carinthian, who was confident for the goal-scorer:”The runway will surely fit, they have put enough water into it. If you’re going well, there’s a chance.”
Mayer’s gaze was quickly focused on the slalom. He said it was gonna be hard for him to find his way down. The downhill Olympic champion jumped pretty high, he had too much pressure on the ledge and threw it away.”I’d have preferred to be in the front, you must be lucky to catch the wind and he’s turning.”
Speedpilot Kriechmayr was not happy with the “new” downhill line:”I have to be honest, I don’t agree with that. This is no longer a descent, at least a few jumps they could have let us down. I don’t think that would have been a problem either,”said the Upper Austrian, who thought the ride wasn’t so bad and was surprised by the gap,”You can’t expect any miracles from the speed riders in the slalom,”he said because of the rather demanding slope.
Obviously it wasn’t bad “The chances of winning a medal are slim” I’m just trying to accelerate in the slalom and then we have to see what comes out of it. The best technician was Alexis Pinturault, who had previously been traded as a combi-pot favourites, who was tenth with a gap of 1.04, but Hirscher was only 0.28 behind the Frenchman.