Alpine Skiing: ÖSV downhill skiers sent a signal after Poisson’s death

The next Alpine Ski World Cup races of the Olympic Winter will take place on the next two weekends in North America. The women’s races in Killington (USA) and the men’s speed opener in Lake Louise (Canada) are the first races after David Poisson’s fatal training accident.

The scene is under shock, Austria’s speed masters start in Canada with funeral pile. In addition to a letter of condolence, this is intended to show sporting respect for the 2013 World Cup downhill race.

Frenchman Poisson and his team in Nakiska in the province of Alberta had prepared for the races in nearby Lake Louise, where he had been hit by a tree and fatally injured in an accident a week ago.

Some ski teams had left Nakiska afterwards, while Austria’s junior skiers continued to train on the Canadian accident course. The internal elimination has been postponed, however, it is now rising this week in one of the three official training runs in Lake Louise. 14 ÖSV runners come to Canada, 10 are allowed to start in the downhill on Saturday. On Sunday a Super-G follows.

After the Poisson’s accident, Andreas Puelacher reported that there was still a lot of concern,”It really hit everyone very hard,”said the men’s race director of the ÖSV in Copper Mountain. The “Speed Center” of the US Ski Federation in Colorado is also a popular arena for many ski teams to prepare for the North American races.

Until Sunday, the ÖSV aces around downhill Olympic champion Matthias Mayer have put the finishing touches on Lake Louise. Puelacher admitted that the accident was of course also a depressing topic in Copper:”We approached him within the team and tried to process him professionally.”

As a result, the ÖSV runners decided to compete with Trauerflor in Lake Louise even before any measures of the International Ski Federation (FIS) were taken. All in all, it is important to re-establish a kind of everyday training routine as quickly as possible, explained Puelacher,”After the training sessions in Lake Louise, we will see whether it has worked out or not. The closer the races come, the more we will demand from the athletes.”

Roland Assinger also confirmed that the entire ski scene is in shock:”This is something that gets under everyone’s skin. We are all part of a family on two boards,”the head coach of the ÖSV Speedwomen told APA.

Assinger’s ladies around Anna Veith, Cornelia Hütter and super-G world champion Nicole Schmidhofer are currently training in Copper Mountain until Tuesday. And that on a well-secured track, as the Carinthian emphasized.

But also in Nakiska, Assinger emphasized that the training track itself is always very well attended to,”Once again, however, there were factors that led to an accident where everything went wrong,”the ex-racer believes.

Of course, as a tragic event like this, you have to think hard as a trainer. Assinger:”On the day after the accident, the atmosphere on the Copper slope was different from that of the days before. Cause that didn’t leave anyone cold. And then you look over the track twice more and you just get more sensitive.”