Contents
Wendy Holdener put everything on one card in the second run of the World Championship slalom, but was not rewarded for it.
“-0.72” lights up green on Wendy Holdener’s last split. The native of Schwyz is well on the way to pulverizing the best time of the leader Laurence St-Germain, the biggest cliffs already seem to have been circumnavigated, and the gold medal is also within reach with this trip.
I wanted to ski really cool and not give anything away. That was the plan.
But then Holdener loses contact with the ground, is levered out again shortly afterwards, and finally her inner ski grabs at the wrong time – the Swiss no longer has a chance of passing the next goal correctly. She is eliminated with the World Cup medal in mind. But what exactly happened? In the finish area, the 6-time World Cup medalist is looking for explanations.
“I’m trying to figure out what the problem was. I came from the shade into the sun … I don’t know, I don’t quite understand it yet, »said the disappointed Holdener in an interview. “I attacked and drove well. I wanted to ski really cool and not give anything away. That was the plan. I was hoping that I could compete for gold.”
Holdener traveling almost too fast
“Wendy was in serious trouble just before the out and could have installed a brake. But she wanted to stay on course and therefore on course for gold and decided against it, »SRF expert Tina Weirather analyzed Holdener’s attacking drive. The longer “suspended phase” combined with the high speed would have made it impossible to reach the red goal, according to Weirather.
For Holdener, the out in the Méribel slalom should represent a bitter déjà vu. 4 years ago at the World Championships in Are, the Swiss brought herself into a similarly favorable starting position with the half-time lead before she was eliminated in the second round shortly after the start. At the last title fights in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Holdener was on course for bronze after the first round, but in the end only came 4th. So the 29-year-old remains in her prime discipline with a World Cup medal: in 2017 Holdener was in St. Moritz second behind Mikaela Shiffrin.
With 2 medals in their luggage
For Holdener, the World Cup in France ends with a disappointment. Although she is traveling back to Switzerland with two more World Championship medals in her luggage (silver in the alpine combination and in the parallel event), she would have loved to have done more in the slalom. Holdener had a clear plan – it almost came true…