“He can go to the limit”
“Crazy Canuck” Crawford duped the favorites
2/9/2023 7:32 p.m
Ski racer Andreas Sander needs light. Despite vision problems, the German leaves his teammates far behind in the Super-G. Canadian James Crawford masters the dark passages best at the World Championships. Among the big defeats are Marco Odermatt and Vincent Kriechmayr.
The great gold favorite Marco Odermatt was bitterly disappointed, his rival Aleksander Aamodt Kilde angrily threw his gloves in the snow after his hundredth shock – and the clearly beaten Germans were anything but the hoped-for grab bag. The big coup was a descendant of the “Crazy Canucks”: James Crawford from Canada duped everyone who had promised themselves something in the Super-G at the World Ski Championships and drove to victory in a spectacular manner.
“Great praise for the guy,” said Andreas Sander, who was the best German in ninth (+0.67 seconds). Crawford drove the course in Courchevel exactly as the German quartet had planned. “He takes risks,” said Sander, “so he can go to the limit.” And full of respect for the 25-year-old Olympic bronze medalist in the combination, he added: “I can really learn something from him from time to time. Hop or top – today it worked for him.”
The fight with the dark
It didn’t work out for Kilde by a hair’s breadth, Crawford snatched the gold from the Norwegian by 0.01 seconds. Combined World Champion Alexis Pinturault from France won bronze. The Swiss top favorite Odermatt missed the podium in fourth place, Vincent Kriechmayr from Austria had to give up his title from 2021 in twelfth place. And Romed Bauman? Two years after his sensational silver medal run in Cortina d’Ampezzo, he found himself in 27th place, just ahead of Simon Jocher (29th). Josef Ferstl dropped out. “The result? Well,” said alpine boss Wolfgang Maier. “You can’t be satisfied with that because we only have one really competitive man.”
The eagerly awaited breakthrough of the German high-speed drivers is still a long time coming. The descent without a podium place, which has lasted for two years, continues. At the speed start, Sander was mainly struggling with the dark passages. “It has a bit to do with my eyes, that when I’m driving in the shadows I have trouble seeing a lot on the ground,” he explained.
“Feeling like I deserved gold”
Sander did a “decent” job, everyone else was well below what was hoped for. “The Canadians got the lucky punch this time,” he added, “that Crawford would win, nobody had that in mind.” The surprise winner first had to process what he had achieved on the Roc de Fer slope. “I’ve shown I can be fast before,” he said, but to beat the favorites “now feels unreal, incredible.” In the World Cup, the Canadian, who briefly played in a team with ice hockey superstar Connor McDavid as a youth, is yet to win and has only finished second twice.
The narrowly defeated Kilde could hardly believe what had happened to him so suddenly. “I felt like I deserved gold and I still do. But that will come back eventually, maybe as early as Sunday.” Then Kilde is a big favorite to win the downhill. And he’s going there with his first World Cup medal. He was happy about that anyway. “It’s really nice.” But he wants more. The same applies to Odermatt, who could not benefit from the fact that the Swiss downhill coach Reto Nydegger had flagged out the course. Yes, admitted the serial winner in the World Cup, the disappointment “is great, of course, if you want a gold medal and come fourth, there is not much that you can take away positively”.