Goggia wins with dog kisses
With the silver slats, Weidle races to “Bronze”
1/20/2023 1:33 p.m
Germany’s fastest skier Kira Weidle races onto the podium for the second time this winter in Cortina d’Ampezzo. Your recipe for success? The World Cup bars of 2021. The Italian speed queen Sofia Goggia celebrates the victory, superstar Mikaela Shiffrin fails.
Kira Weidle didn’t want to rejoice too soon. “There are still a few to come,” said the best German downhill skier, and she also allowed herself “one or two slides too many” on her silver run in 2021. Weidle feared that her third place in Cortina d’Ampezzo would not be tenable, especially as visibility improved. But whether Olympic champion Corinne Suter, who fell, or the blundering record hunter Mikaela Shiffrin – none of the following experts was faster. And so Weidle was later able to stand on the downhill podium, beaming with joy, for the second time this winter after third place in St. Moritz.
Your recipe for success? The 26-year-old was on the silver skis with which she celebrated her greatest success to date at the World Championships two years ago. In the meantime she was even faster than speed queen Sofia Goggia, who took her fourth win of the season. In the lower section, however, Weidle briefly lost sight of the ideal line. No wonder: the view over the Tofana, she reported, was “pretty diffuse” and only improved over the course of the race, for example for Shiffrin. All the more remarkable was Weidle’s sixth podium in the World Cup. Weidle was 0.36 seconds behind Goggia, who got a kiss from her dog Belle. Former World Champion Ilka Stuhec (Slovenia) was 0.23 seconds ahead of her.
She “didn’t drive 100 percent cleanly,” admitted Weidle, but it was “but also difficult” because of the conditions. After a moment of shock in the second training session, she “changed her tactics a bit” on the wave where she lost her possible first victory. It was “easier, but also slower” there. For the second descent in the Dolomites on Saturday (10 a.m.), she had to “find a middle ground for that spot so that I didn’t throw away a podium finish,” said Weidle. She held it 0.14 seconds ahead of Shiffrin on the first try.
Goggia didn’t get through flawlessly either, but was the fastest over said wave – the key to the 16th downhill victory. The Olympic silver medalist thus moved up to Katja Seizinger in fifth place in the list of the best. Record hunter Shiffrin, meanwhile clearly in front, made a mistake in the lower section and finished fourth.