Swiss skier Odermatt beats Kilde for downhill gold at worlds

COURCHEVEL, France — Swiss skier Marco Odermatt won gold in the men’s downhill Sunday for his first career world championships medal.

Odermatt had a flawless run on the demanding L’Eclipse course to beat Aleksander Aamodt Kilde by 0.48 seconds as the Norwegian added to his silver from Thursday’s super-G.

Cameron Alexander finished 0.89 behind to take the bronze for Canada’s second medal of the worlds after teammate James Crawford had won the super-G.

Odermatt let out a few screams after posting the fastest time. He had not won a medal in eight previous starts at senior world championships, after winning five golds at the 2018 junior worlds.

“It was definitely something I’d never felt before, this scream at the finish,” Odermatt said. “Also, those two minutes during Aleks’ run, I was shaking all over my body like never before.”

Odermatt is the defending overall World Cup champion and is dominating the circuit again this season, but had not won a downhill race before.

His gold medal came three days after he finished fourth in the super-G, an event in which he was heavily favored after winning four of this season’s six World Cup races.

“The fourth place from three days ago makes this gold even nicer,” Odermatt said.

Super-G winner Crawford stood third for a while in Sunday’s race before his time was beaten by his teammate Alexander and by Austria’s Marco Schwarz, who finished four-hundredths of a second off the podium in fourth.

It’s the first time since 2015 that the Austrian men’s team failed to medal in the marquee event of the world championships.

Defending champion Vincent Kriechmayr lost his chance of a medal as he struggled in the Trou Noir (Black Hole), where racers land a jump in the dark shade and cannot see the tracks and bumps of the course.

“It was a good run but you have to race error-free here, and I didn’t manage to do that. All in all, just not good enough,” Kriechmayr said. “Odermatt had the perfect run, for sure.”

The start of the L’Eclipse course is in the sun, but racers soon enter a lengthy shaded middle part through a forest before coming out in the sun again for the finish.

On another bright day in the French Alps, the sunshine didn’t affect the race like it had done in the women’s downhill Saturday, when the sun started beaming down on the Roc de Fer course in Meribel and seemed to break down the course and slow the later starters. Odermatt’s victory made it a Swiss downhill double after Jasmine Flury won the women’s race.

The race was interrupted for 20 minutes after Brodie Seger awkwardly landed a jump and apparently hurt his right knee. The Canadian had to be taken off the hill on a stretcher and was flown to hospital by helicopter.

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