After the Austrian ski week with Kitzbühel and Schladming, one thing has to be said: the Austrian downhill skiers in particular are causing concern – they have never been so bad. In certain respects they look at the Swiss with envy.
There’s still one piece missing from top form: Vincent Kriechmayr during downhill training on the Streif in Kitzbühel.
Johann Groder / APA
Five races, one podium. This is Austria’s takeaway from the intensive week on its own terrain with the classics in Kitzbühel and Schladming. Manuel Feller achieved a podium finish in the giant slalom, for which he had hardly trained since mid-December due to back problems. Even though he couldn’t build on his victories in Adelboden and Wengen in the slaloms: Feller had a successful January, he is in third place in the overall World Cup behind Marco Odermatt and Cyprien Sarrazin.
Despite Feller’s successes, the Austrians are currently anything but satisfied. The main problem is the descent, the former pride and heart of the most successful ski nation. The balance of the season so far: seven descents, no podium. The Austrians have never been this bad since the World Cup was introduced in 1967. To put the dominance into perspective: The Austrians have 192 downhill victories in the all-time winners list, followed by the Swiss in second place with 129 victories. No wonder, this season is a stab in the red-white-red hearts, which are used to success.
The Austrians only have one winning rider in their ranks, Vincent Kriechmayr, world champion and nine-time World Cup winner in downhill. Of all people, the 32-year-old doesn’t currently feel comfortable enough on downhill skis to take full risks. In Kitzbühel he showed good signs again, which was enough for places seven and six.
In the last six years there have only been three downhill winners
Since 2017 and Hannes Reichelt, there have only been two other Austrians besides Kriechmayr who have won a downhill: firstly Max Franz, 34, a daredevil and eternal promise of great success. Fourteen months ago, however, he broke both legs and also severed a nerve; a comeback is a long way off.
The second was Olympic champion Matthias Mayer, 33, who surprisingly resigned last winter. In Kitzbühel on Thursday he helped the young ÖSV drivers on the tour to choose their route – and was taken away by the police in the evening because he had become abusive while under the influence of alcohol. It then became known that Mayer had probably had psychological problems for a long time and was being treated.
The most serious failure, however, is Marco Schwarz, who wanted to challenge Odermatt for the overall World Cup this year. After an excellent start to the season, he tore his cruciate ligament shortly before the end of the year.
He also wanted to shine in the downhill this winter: Marco Schwarz, here in the giant slalom in Alta Badia.
Andrea Solero / Imago
The narrow downhill group cannot currently cope with the lack of such big names, especially if the second guard around Daniel Hemetsberger, 32, Daniel Danklmaier, 30, or Otmar Striedinger, 32, is weakened by illness or injury.
Whether Mayer, Danklmaier or Kriechmayr – it doesn’t matter. For Sepp Brunner, one number perfectly illustrates the difficulties of the downhill discipline in Austria. “There were 46 participants at the Austrian downhill championships last spring, and 119 in Switzerland. That says it all.” Brunner has been the Austrian men’s downhill coach since 2017, having previously held various coaching roles in Switzerland for two decades. He sees a reason for this big difference in the breadth of the two skiing nations in the speed camps that Swiss Ski has been holding for U-18/U-21 riders since 2012, each autumn on the glaciers in Zermatt and Saas Fee. It has also been available for the U16s for three years.
These courses give young people the opportunity to discover their interest in fast-paced disciplines. If they don’t get this chance, it will be more difficult to get started, says Brunner, and he is also feeling increasing skepticism from parents about the descent because of the many accidents.
No more summer training on the glacier
In Austria there are no longer any opportunities to train downhill on the glacier in summer or autumn. The association even has to send the European Cup riders to South America in the summer, says the alpine director of Ski Austria, Herbert Mandl, otherwise they would be too late. However, the goal is not to attract all good athletes to the speed disciplines, but also to place more emphasis on good giant slalom training; it remains the basic discipline. There is still room for improvement in the technical training of young talent, say several observers.
He is not in crisis: The technical specialist Manuel Feller has already won three times this winter.
Christian Bruna / EPA
Many people born in 1990 and later were out due to injuries, says Mandl, and “if that affects the two best drivers in each year, it has a big impact on the width.” Switzerland also knows this problem: What is the best way to lead the talented riders safely into the World Cup without burning them out, but still catching up in time so that the older ones feel the pressure from below?
The advantage of early World Cup appearances is that they get to know the slopes. On the other hand, it is also good for development to “learn to win” at a different level, as Mandl says. The issue caused an outcry in January: in Wengen there were only four Austrians at the start of the downhill run. Stephan Eberharter complained in his column in the “Kronen-Zeitung” that it was a “show of poverty” for the skier nation; unthinkable in his own times of success around the turn of the millennium in the incredibly strong team around Hermann Maier, Fritz Strobl, Michael Walchhofer and Hannes Trinkl.
Driving the Lauberhorn races would have been “strategically stupid”.
Marko Pfeifer, the ÖSV men’s racing director, didn’t find it funny to send only four athletes to the Lauberhorn start. But at the same time, European Cup downhill runs took place in Saalbach, the only ones of the winter in Austria. It would have been “strategically stupid” not to let the young drivers start there but in Wengen, says Pfeifer. Because the goal is also in Austria: to secure fixed places for the World Cup through the European Cup. The top three in the discipline ranking at the end of the season receive such a fixed place for the following season. Firstly, you no longer burden the national starting contingent and also save yourself the stress of constant internal eliminations.
Was the best Austrian downhill skier in Kitzbühel: Stefan Babinsky in fourth place.
Guenther Iby / Getty
What the Austrians continue to identify as problems concerns almost all nations equally. First: the difficulty of holding lower-class FIS and European Cup races in the speed disciplines. There are no organizers for the races because the effort is so great. Secondly, a lack of a permanent association runway. This would guarantee training and racing at a high level, but would mean that it would remain closed to all tourists. Of course it’s a lot of money, says Marko Pfeifer, who has identified an optimal northern slope in Innerkrems, where the lifts are currently closed – “but ultimately they say that skiing is our sanctuary.”
Last season, for the first time since the start of the World Cup, Austria did not make it into the top 2 of the national rankings for both men and women. They remained without a crystal ball for two winters and have only won the Nations Cup once since 2019. But the Austrians are holding on to something: the next generation around Stefan Babinsky, for example, who came fourth in Kitzbühel. Because Kriechmayr is missing very little. Or the fact that it works very well in Super-G, where three different drivers have already been on the podium this winter, Kriechmayr won in Val Gardena.
This weekend there will be two Super-G races in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. They could serve as a structure for the struggling speed team.