Top 3 rankings after commitment crisis: Fortunately, Meillard didn’t listen to his coach

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Loïc Meillard looks back on the most difficult months of his career. At the last World Championships, the Valais won silver in the giant. That’s why he started this season with particularly high expectations. But Meillard’s confidence quickly diminished when the new bindings from his supplier Look-Rossignol fell open for no apparent reason at the giant slaloms in Sölden and Adelboden.

Swiss ski president Urs Lehmann then spoke of a “disaster that could lead to the athlete losing all safety”. And for Meillard’s slalom coach Matteo Joris it was clear after the failure on the Chuenisbärgli that “Loïc should replace the new binding with the one from last year!”

But the 27-year-old ignored this advice. «The preparation for the season has clearly shown me that I am faster with the new binding system. Because my supplier revised the system after Adelboden, I stuck with it.”

Salty explanation for this exploit

On Saturday in Garmisch, Meillard will be rewarded for his perseverance with his first podium place of the winter. With starting number 5 he conjures up a time on the Kandahar track that is the fastest up to starting number 17. Then the Italian Guglielmo Bosca (30, first top 3 place in the World Cup) and the Frenchman Nils Allegre (30, first World Cup victory) are slightly worse. faster.

For Meillard, joy still dominates. “After everything that has happened recently, this result is very good!” Even proven experts are surprised that the high-end engineer achieved this top 3 placement in a technically simple Super-G. But Meillard offers a plausible explanation: “I have always felt very comfortable on such heavily salted slopes.”

Von Allmen equalized the best result

World Championship rookie Franjo von Allmen delivers another impressive performance and races to 9th place with starting number 44! The trained carpenter thus equaled his best World Cup result from the Super-G in Val Gardena. The 22-year-old admits that he was particularly tense before this race. “Because it became clear during the inspection that the track was in a limit state, I had to overcome myself even more than last week at my premiere on the infamous Streif in Kitzbühel.”

Source : Blick