By Chris Freud What just happened?
Yes, Germany’s Stefan Luitz led the first run of Sunday, Dec. 2’s Xfinity Birds of Prey Audi FIS Ski World Cup, but you knew that Marcel Hirscher was going to hammer the second run.
Right?
The Austrian is like former quarterback Joe Montana, down by one score, with two minutes left in the game. He knows he going to come back and win. The other team knows he’s going to come back to win. The fans know he’s going to engineer the comeback.
Hirscher is that clutch. He’s Joe Cool.
But Sunday was the day that the inevitable greatness of Hirscher was denied. Luitz celebrated like he stole something, which he may have done.
His first World Cup win came over Hirscher and that’s something that Luitz will carry around proudly for the rest of his life. Throw in that he’s torn both his right and left ACLs? This is almost like a Hollywood movie script.
Good for him, and this is why ski-racing is one of the greatest shows going. No one thought Luitz would win, and he did.
Ted and Marcel
Of course, we wanted to see Ted Ligety rise and snatch a bit of past glory. But, truthfully, Hirscher’s general domination of tech races is what Ted did in the old days in GS.
Ted won five straight GS starts here from 2011-2015, the last year being the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships. Yes, there were years that Ligety threw down during the first run, and the race was over (2012 and 2013).
But …
In his 2011 win, Ligety trailed Hirscher by 2-hundredths of second after the first run. In 2014 here, France’s Alexis Pinturault led Ted by 24-hundredths after the morning. The 2015 Worlds were his best comeback. Ligety was not only off the pace, but behind three guys, Hirscher, Pinturault and Germany’s Felix Neureuther.
Yet, as a fan, you just had the feeling that Ted was going to pull through because he was the best at what he did at the time.
That’s Hirscher now. He is that good and that’s again why Luitz’s upset is so incredible.
In the 26 GS races since the start of the 2015-16 World Cup season, Hirscher has won 14 of them, podiumed in 24 of them and his “worst” finish was sixth. (“Marcel, you finished sixth? You stink.)
Bigger picture, Hirscher is the greatest skier of this generation. He’s won the overall seven straight years, and is on his way to No. 8. The previous record was five overalls by Marc Girardelli, and the Luxembourg skier certainly didn’t win those consecutively.
River at Beaver Creek
Let’s remember the kid is only 20.
River Radamus was 54th in the super-G and 47th in the first run of GS. In the latter, he was 1.07 seconds off the flip.
As much as the Ski & Snowboard Club Vail product knows this course, and has institutional knowledge from watching all the races, it might be good for him to go to Europe and get a few starts as anonymous American ski racer.
Back to the “He’s 20” theme, …read more
Via:: Vail Daily