When the men’s slalom is scheduled for the Olympic Games on Thursday (2.00 and 5.30 a. m. in the SPOX live ticker), the next Golden one seems to be ready for pickup by Marcel Hirscher. It would fit perfectly into the story of the supposedly incomplete, who triumphantly chooses himself as Olympic champion in all his starts. In reality, however, the slalom gold mission is by no means so easy to implement.
The competitors, above all Henrik Kristoffersen, who certainly doesn’t want to be second again behind Hirscher, stand in line. Hirscher himself senses that the favourites have been addressed, but above all he sees danger from his own ranks.
“If you take today’s training, then a very fast man is sitting to my left, he has already shown that in the combined slalom,” says Marco Schwarz, the leader of the overall World Cup with a view to Marco Schwarz, and makes it clear:”Marco is one of the favourites for me. The fact that Hirscher’s secret favourite was a shaky candidate speaks for the quality of the Austrian slalom team.
“Marcel Hirscher, Manuel Feller and Michael Matt don’t have much to say about the line-up. Our only consideration was the one between Christian Hirschbühl and Marco Schwarz,”says Andreas Puelacher. The decision was in favour of the 22-year-old Carinthian,”because he started in the first group and showed very good training performance.
It’s exactly those training performances that earn Hirscher the highest respect:”You’re driving at his best time in every run”, the Salzburg rider replies to his team mate, who takes Hirscher’s statements lightly and says with a smile:”I’m beginning to think that there’s a bit of a psychological game behind it, too,” Feller adds in the direction of Hirscher:”We know that you’re still 20 percent in the race.
Feller, who is still struggling with bruises after his fall on RTL, is also announcing his own ambitions. I’m not here to finish second,”says the 25-year-old.
According to Hirscher, the very special conditions in Yongpyong make it very difficult to judge the starting position:”It’s the same situation as on RTL: You have to hope that the conditions in the race are different from those on the training slope. They definitely will be. Uncertainty is very great, so you won’t be able to judge the race until Thursday and know how comfortable you feel,”Hirscher believes.
In Jeongseon they had treated the slalom track with a little water, but I don’t think they did anything here. It’s still a bit more aggressive, I like it,”he says. For Hirscher, however, the first training session falls into the category “so lala”:”I like it when it’s icy. The snow here is very aggressive. But we’re assuming the racetrack will be a little different from what it looks like in practice.”
Apart from Schwarz, Hirscher has those two men on top of the list in the battle for gold who were on the podium together with him at the last two World Cup slaloms in Kitzbühel and Schladming:”You have to count on Kristoffersen in any case, but I also believe that Daniel Yule can perhaps be very, very fast here,”Hirscher says.
But perhaps, in the end, a Matt precious metal will traditionally hang around again. After Mario (Slalom Olympic Champion 2014) and Andreas (Skicross 2010), Michael could be the third in the league after Mario (Slalom Olympic Champion 2014) and Andreas (Skicross 2010) to start the journey home to Flirsch with a brilliant souvenir.