Dean of the French team, he won his first Olympic medal at the age of 41. This is the second French medal in these Games.
“We will have to have a good race and pray”, he said after his first training session. In question, the very windy conditions on the Chinese track. This is precisely what the Frenchman did on Monday. Author of an almost perfect race, he won the silver medal in the downhill – the flagship event of alpine skiing – finishing on the heels of Beat Feuz, ten hundredths of the Swiss who left with the gold. Austrian Matthias Mayer took third place, 16 hundredths behind Feuz.
At his age, he should be a coach, a consultant, or could wisely encourage his teammates from his living room. But no, after celebrating his 41st birthday in early January, Johan Clarey took all the risks to sign the greatest feat of his career. “If someone had told me that this morning, I would never have believed it,” he blurted out just after the race.
After the postponement of the race from Sunday to Monday due to the wind, it was under a bright sun, and with a calm wind (10 km / h and gusts of 24 km / h at the start), that the Frenchman won her first Olympic medal in four appearances. He broke the record for the oldest medalist in alpine skiing, so far held by American Bode Miller, who was 36 when he won the super-G bronze in 2014.
Vice-world super-G champion in 2019, author of nine World Cup podiums including a second place in Kitzbühel in January, he missed Clarey by 10 hundredths to become the heir to the Blues Antoine Dénériaz (2006), Jean -Luc Crétier (1998), Jean-Claude Killy (1968), Jean Vuarnet (1960) and Henri Oreiller (1948), all crowned in the Olympic downhill.
Third medal for Feuz
But as in 2021 in Kitzbühel, he came up against the Swiss Beat Feuz, the best downhiller of the last four years, for the first time titled at the Olympics after the bronze in the downhill and the silver in the super-G in 2018 in Pyeongchang.
With this title on the most prestigious stage in the sporting world, Feuz (34) has achieved the goal of a lifetime and engraved his name in the memories. History will also remember him as the first Olympic champion of a mountain without snow, transformed for the occasion by a country which had never hosted an international alpine ski competition.
On this three kilometer ribbon, winding between the rocks and bushes of an arid massif, the Bernese once again used his talents as a skirmisher. The chubby skier, a little tight in his standard size bib, still had enough strength to fly his right ski directly from foot to hand at the finish.
The Austrian Matthias Mayer came to pick up 16 hundredths of the Swiss a third medal in three editions of the Games, after the gold of the downhill in 2014 and the super-G in 2018.