Unvaccinated Olympic champion Kummer is quarantined in Beijing. The SCL Tigers sign two new goalies for next season. And: Turkish national soccer player dies in a car accident. The most important sports news at a glance.
Alpine skiing: Rast is the only Swiss highlight in the Schladming slalom – 4th place
Camille Rast is in very good shape.
(sda) Camille Rast took the next step towards the top in the World Cup slalom in Schladming. The Valais was fourth in the race won by the American Mikaela Shiffrin. She missed the podium by just eight hundredths of a second.
With their best result so far in the World Cup, Rast stepped into the breach for Wendy Holdener and Michelle Gisin. Holdener from Schwyz, who was in third place after the first run, was eliminated in the second, Gisin from Obwalden in the first run after a threader.
Shiffrin celebrated her second win of the season in slalom. With a total of 47 triumphs in the pole forest, she is the first person ever in alpine ski racing with so many victories in a discipline. Ingemar Stenmark had achieved 46 first places in the giant slalom. Petra Vlhova took second place to secure her early victory in the overall slalom ranking.
Alpine skiing: Kriechmayr threatens to miss the Lauberhorn races due to Corona – Innerhofer with the best time in the first training
Christof Innerhofer starts the training run in Wengen in perfect conditions.
(sda) The Swiss are convincing in the first training session for the two World Cup runs on Friday and Saturday in Wengen. Four Swiss-Ski drivers make it into the top ten. But the fastest is an Italian: 37-year-old Christof Innerhofer.
The results of the first training session in perfect conditions and under a steel blue sky in the Bernese Oberland are not very meaningful. For most of them it was little more than a timekeeping track inspection.
Christof Innerhofer was one of the few who took it a little more briskly, he drove the best time in training. So far this winter, the Italian is missing a top result in the downhill. He wants to deliver this at the Lauberhorn, where he triumphed nine years ago.
The best of a good Swiss team was Stefan Rogentin, who only lost seven hundredths to Innerhofer. Behind the Bündner, the three-time Lauberhorn winner Beat Feuz (3rd), Niels Hintermann (8th) and Carlo Janka (9th) also made it into the top ten in the first training session. This is particularly encouraging for Janka from Graubünden. He will contest his first race of the season on the track where he won twelve years ago. Janka, who suffers from chronic back pain, had actually planned this in Bormio; but he postponed the premiere again after ranks 61 and 62 in the training sessions.
On the cautious side, Marco Odermatt completed his first trip in Wengen. The leader in the overall World Cup and giant slalom winner from Adelboden last weekend entered uncharted territory on the Lauberhorn. «This descent is long and peppered with difficulties from the start curve to the finish S. There are many passages where you need to have a good plan. For me, the automatism was definitely missing », says Odermatt, whose loss of more than four seconds on the fastest time and only 45th place could be explained.
Vincent Kriechmayr had to forego participating in the training. The downhill world champion and former Lauberhorn winner waited to arrive after a positive corona diagnosis. If Kriechmayr cannot start the second training session on Wednesday either, he will miss the two runs in the Bernese Oberland.
Snowboard: Unvaccinated Olympic champion Kummer is quarantined in Beijing
Patrizia grief.
(sda) Although the snowboarder Patrizia Kummer from Swiss Olympic is not definitely selected for the Winter Olympics, she is already traveling to Beijing this week. There she goes into a 21-day quarantine. The 2014 Olympic champion in the parallel giant slalom did not get vaccinated for personal reasons.
Ice hockey: The SCL Tigers sign two new goalies for next season
Luca Boltshauser, here still as a goalie from Lausanne.
(sda) The SCL Tigers are heading into the future with two new goalkeepers. From Lausanne, Luca Boltshauser (28) will join the Emmental for two years for the next season, from Geneva / Servette the former Junior International Stéphane Charlin (21) for one year.
The contract of the Latvian Ivars Punnenov expires after this season. The loaned Robert Mayer should leave the club by the end of January.
Meanwhile, Alexandre Grenier will also play for the Tigers in the next two seasons. The 30-year-old Canadian, currently the third-best scorer in the National League with 12 goals and 30 assists, extended his expiring contract by two years.
Soccer: Turkish international Calik dies in a car accident
(dpa) The Turkish national soccer player Ahmet Calik was killed in a car accident. The 27-year-old’s car rolled over on a motorway near Ankara, reported the state news agency Anadolu. The heavily damaged vehicle was seen in a meadow next to the road. Calik’s club Konyaspor expressed their dismay on Twitter and expressed their condolences to the footballer’s family.
The defender moved to Konyaspor in the 20/21 season, before that he played for the traditional club Galatasaray Istanbul and won the Turkish championship twice with the club. For the Turkish national team, Calik was eight times, most recently in 2017.
Artistic gymnastics: legend Kohei Uchimara resigns
(sda) The gymnastics legend Kohei Uchimura announced that he would end his career. The 33-year-old Japanese was Olympic champion in the all-around competition in 2012 and 2016. In addition, from 2009 to 2015 he secured six gold medals in a row in this discipline. Most recently, he was slowed down by injuries.
Tennis: Victory for Bencic, defeat for Teichmann
Belinda Bencic is in the round of 16 in Sydney and meets a qualifier there.
(sda) The Olympic champion Belinda Bencic has successfully started the new season. Jil Teichmann, on the other hand, loses her first game. Bencic, number 23 in the world, beat Brazilian Beatriz Haddad Maia (WTA 88) 6: 3, 6: 2 in the first round at the WTA 500 tournament in Sydney.
Bencic, who started the season a week later than planned due to a corona illness, will face French qualifier Oceane Dodin (WTA 96) in the round of 16. This defeated the Mexican Giuliana Olmos (WTA 685) 6: 4, 6: 1.
In Adelaide, Teichmann (WTA 37) did not live up to its role as a favorite. The 24-year-old from Biel lost to the American qualifier Lauren Davis (WTA 95) 6: 1, 6: 7 (3: 7), 4: 6 in the opening game. It was an annoying defeat. After the clearly won starting set, the Swiss number 2 conceded a rebreak twice in the second round – to 4: 4 and 6: 6.
Nordic skiing: No cross-country races in Planica
Will the final rehearsal for the cross-country skiers be canceled?
(sda) The cross-country world cup does not stop in Planica on the 22nd / 23rd as planned. January. The corona pandemic is again to blame for a cancellation. Will the World Cup stand still until the Olympic Games in Beijing?
The Slovenian Ski Association has canceled the planned races on the express recommendation of the national health authorities due to the current acute development of the pandemic in Slovenia. The competitions should have served as the final rehearsal for the Nordic World Championships in Planica in 2023.
The World Federation FIS is trying to find a possible replacement location so that World Cup races can still take place before the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing (February 4th to 20th). If no other organizer can be found at short notice, some athletes miss the last chance to qualify for the Olympics. Because already a week ago, due to the increasing number of corona infections with the Omikron variant, the World Cup races planned for the coming weekend in Les Rousses, France, were canceled without replacement.
For the Swiss cross-country skiers, the first part of the Swiss championships on the Sparenmoos above Zweisimmen next weekend remains before Beijing 2022.
Football: Former U-21 national goalie will guard the YB gate in the future
Anthony Racioppi is to replace the injured goalkeeper David von Ballmoos with the Bernese Young Boys.
(sda) The Young Boys reacted to their injury misery in the goalkeeping position and signed Anthony Racioppi. The former Swiss U-21 national goalie joins the Berners from Dijon. The 23-year-old from Geneva signed a contract that will run until the summer of 2025.
Racioppi was trained by Chênois and Olympique Lyon before he moved to Dijon in September 2020 and fought for a regular place in Ligue 1. After relegation to the second division, he played only two league games this season with Dijon.
Racioppi should be number 1 in Bern before regular goalkeeper David von Ballmoos has fully recovered from his shoulder injury. The also injured veteran Guillaume Faivre will continue to play the role of goalkeeper if he is ready for action again. With Abdullah Laidani and Leandro Zbinden, YB also has two talented young goalkeepers.