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The mood in the camp of Austrian downhill skiers has never been as bad as it is today. There is a lot of black paint in the red-white-red media landscape prior to the home match in Kitzbühel. Many Austrian reporters describe their speed team as a “disgrace”, “embarrassing” or “unworthy of a skination!”
The start of the season for the once proud downhill armada is actually historically bad: in four races, the Ösis did not achieve a single podium finish in the highest discipline for the first time in the 57-year history of the Alpine World Cup! The team of former Swiss Ski success trainer Sepp Brunner not only lacks a real sharp point, there is also no width. Last Saturday there were only four ÖSV athletes at the start of the Lauberhorn descent.
It wasn’t that long ago that our neighbors’ speed team was overflowing with top players. In December 1998 there was pure exuberance in Austria after the nine-way victory in the Super-G at Patscherkofel. In November 2002, eleven Austrians placed in the top 15 of the descent in Lake Louise.
“This is very sad”
How is it possible that this former superpower has hardly produced any competitive speed pilots for a few years now? The Styrian Hans Knauss was one of the pillars of the ÖSV wonder team in the late 1990s and early 2000s, alongside Hermann Maier, Stephan Eberharter, Fritz Strobl and Hannes Trinkl. In 1999, the current ORF expert triumphed on the Hahnenkamm descent.
For Knauss it is clear that the basic work of the young talent has been neglected at Ski Austria over the past ten years: “During this time, almost everything was invested in the top, they wanted to make the top people even better. But no further development has yet taken place in the lower grades.” The 52-year-old goes into detail: “When I was a young racing driver, I could easily participate in six to seven FIS downhill races per season in Austria. Nowadays we hardly have any FIS and European Cup races anymore. Our young talent lacks permanent downhill training routes, while the Italians, for example, have seven. And that makes me particularly sad: the rest of the skiing world used to look at us, now we have to orient ourselves towards the others.
“We missed this development!”
Rainer Salzgeber (56) became second world champion in the giant slalom in 1993. The Vorarlberger also attributes the downhill crisis in Austria to its former flagship discipline: “The downhill sport is currently dominated by two athletes originally from giant slalom: Marco Odermatt and Cyprien Sarrazin. This is because the descents are becoming increasingly technical. This development has been missed in Austria in recent years.”
That is why Daniel Hemetsberger, who took third place at the Streif two years ago, has to publicly admit that the analyzes of Odermatt’s dream rides do not help him: “I don’t need to watch a video of the Odi. If I were to drive on slopes like him, I would end up in the safety fence…”
Kriechmayr raises hope
The question arises: what now, Ski Austria? Should coach Sepp Brunner, who previously trained Carlo Janka to become an overall World Cup winner at Swiss-Ski and coached Beat Feuz to become downhill world champion, leave his post? Hans Knauss shakes his head: “The problem is not with the coaches, they are good. The problem is that our foundation remains at the same level as 15 years ago. And we urgently need to change that.”
Michael Walchhofer (48) from Salzburg, who won gold in the downhill at the 2003 Downhill World Championships in St. Moritz, sees it a little differently. “I believe our coaching staff could get more out of the athletes.” But the Austrians may have reason to celebrate again on Friday in the first of two Hahnenkamm descents. Vincent Kriechmayr showed during training with some fantastic section times that he is one of the big contenders for a podium place.
Source : Blick
I’m Emma Jack, a news website author at 24 News Reporters. I have been in the industry for over five years and it has been an incredible journey so far. I specialize in sports reporting and am highly knowledgeable about the latest trends and developments in this field.
