The story appears on

Page A15

February 15, 2017

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Sports » Skiing

France snares world team gold

FRANCE edged Slovakia by just eight-hundredths of a second to win the team event at the Alpine ski world championships in St Moritz, Switzerland, yesterday.

The final finished level at 2-2 after Alexis Pinturault and Mathieu Faivre won their races for the French, and Veronika Velez Zuzulova and Petra Vlhova for the Slovaks. The tie breaking time went in favor of France, handing it a first medal of the championships.

“Every team was very strong, every heat a tooth-by-nail battle,” said Pinturault, for whom gold will go some way to make up for his disappointment at finishing 10th in Monday’s combined.

Tessa Worley, the only member of the France team who also won team gold at the Garmisch worlds in 2011, added: “We didn’t expect it but we were ready to fight really hard until the end.

“It was a long shot, for sure. There are so many runs to do.

“It was really, really tight! We’re really happy we’ve won gold and we’ll celebrate it with the whole team.”

Adeline Baud Mugnier, who notched up a key victory over Swedish heavyweight Frida Hansdotter in the semifinal, made up the French quartet and was left basking after its success. “It’s my first podium ever, it’s an amazing emotion.”

Sweden took bronze after posting a 3-1 victory over a Switzerland team featuring two individual gold medal winners in Wendy Holdener and Luca Aerni.

Double defending champion Austria saw its hopes of a third successive gold go up in smoke with a 1-4 defeat by Sweden in the quarterfinals.

Marcel Hirscher, chasing a sixth consecutive overall World Cup title, had a shocker of an afternoon, losing both his races. First he was subject of a massive upset when edged by Dries van den Broecke in Austria’s 3-1 opening win over Belgium, before losing to Sweden’s Andre Myhrer.

First introduced into the world championships in 2005, the team event will next year be included on the program for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

The telegenic, mixed-sex event has caught the public’s imagination, with skiers racing down a slalom slope side-by-side to offer a different take on the very individualistic sport of Alpine skiing.

Slovakia’s Velez Zuzulova summed up what the team event meant for racers.

“I really enjoyed skiing with my younger teammates, especially with Petra,” she said citing compatriot Vlhova. “We fight all winter: we’re from the same country but not the same team! Today we were together going for the same goal.”




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend