Until now, it was doubtful that Zlatan Ibrahimovic knows the feeling of awe. But then the former footballer took a seat at the foot of the Hahnenkamm, he was content with row two, and seemed genuinely impressed. “I wish I were a skier,” he soon said at the Kitzbühel stadium microphone. However, his ski instructor was not very good, which is why he fired the man and never learned to ski himself. Meanwhile, Arnold Schwarzenegger sat a few meters further away, he has known the madness of the Streif descent for a long time, and kept it short. “I’ll be back,” said the Terminator. A sentence that could also come from all the skiers who have been thrown off the Streif over the years.
Spectators like Ralf Rangnick, Maria Riesch and Melissa Naschenweng contributed to the grandstand show. On the biggest stage that alpine skiing has to offer, a Canadian took on the leading role. James Crawford from Whistler, who had never won a World Cup race before, rushed into the valley with start number 20 like a living cannonball, he was clean on both steep and flatter slopes, even in the traverse, before jumping to the finish line at 140 kilometers per hour The goal was shot and the Swiss Alexis Monney took the victory. In the end, Crawford had a lead of eight hundredths of a second, which corresponds to 2.33 meters on the slopes. And because Crawford’s teammate Cameron Alexander came third, 22 hundredths of a second behind, there was a touch of Canadian nostalgia in the Kitzbühel air: as if the famous Crazy Canucks from the 1970s had been conjured up.
:Alpine skiing hardly forgives mistakes anymore. The current series of falls is an unacceptable situation
Witnesses to his wild ride over the edge of the local mountain were, among others, the singer James Blunt, who told ORF that “there is no song that is hard enough for the Streif”. Formula 1 driver Nico Hülkenberg contributed in his own way to the classification of the Kitzbühel downhill race. His sport is less dangerous, says Külkenberg. “We’re in the car, but the skiers don’t have a crumple zone.”
The best news for all ski fans on Saturday was that the increasingly intense safety debate was allowed to pause for a day. This time the Streif myth did not have to be expanded to include another chapter of serious falls; there were a few failures, but nothing compared to the 14 failures including two helicopter flights in the Super-G the day before. Instead, you could stretch the really large frame. Arnold Schwarzenegger should remember the Canadians Jim Hunter, Dave Irwin, Ken Read, Dave Murray and Steve Podborski, who challenged the dominance of the Europeans in the seventies and eighties, racing to downhill World Cups and medals in their bright yellow jerseys. The Canadians now wear a comparatively inconspicuous dark blue.
What is special about James Crawford is that, unlike one of his predecessors, Eric Guay, he is less suspected of making a fuss about the Kitzbühel or soon Garmisch nights. Crawford is one of the many highly gifted people in today’s alpine sport whose parents laid out the tracks for him at an early age on which he set off into an exemplary career. He skied in the ski clubs in Canada’s flagship ski resort of Whistler and later went to school there. He thought for a while that he could become a decent hockey player, but quickly put that thought to rest when, in eighth grade, he played on the school team with Connor McDavid for a year. McDavid, now Leon Draisaitl’s teammate with the Edmonton Oilers, was already shaping ice hockey back then like a young Odermatt was shaping skiing, and so Crawford turned to skiing. At the age of 19, the coaches let him make his debut in the World Cup on the hardest slope of all: the Kitzbüheler Streif, on which he was now even faster than the great dominator Odermatt and everyone else.
The Swiss had delivered a solid ride, but after the Canadian Alexander had conquered the local mountain, it was clear that the previous day’s winner Odermatt would also be among the defeated on this descent. He stood in the finish area and fussed with his drinking bottle. He had obviously closed it improperly, and as he shook the drink splashed on his hands. As if Odermatt bent down, properly screwed the cap onto the bottle, took a good sip and made his way towards the exit, where Alexander met him from the slopes with his helmet on his head and patted him on the shoulder as he passed.
The third oldest professional in this race, Romed Baumann, crossed the finish line in 17th place as the best of only two starters from the German Ski Association. At 39 years old, he is still keeping up with the world elite. The home crowd had already prepared for an Austrian podium finish because Daniel Hemetsberger crossed the Kitzbühel finish line third fastest to date after his sparkling clean ride. But then came the Canadian cannonball.
Meanwhile, Alexander’s teammate Crawford spoke into quite a few microphones; he was reminded of February 2023, when reporters suddenly surrounded him in Courchevel, France, because he had just won the World Super-G title, just as surprising as his downhill victory in Kitzbühel, as he himself suggested. “I came in here with no expectations,” Crawford said. “Winning here is the dream.” Very few people were now interested in Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
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