Vincent Kriechmayr pips Marco Odermatt to downhill victory at Val Gardena, Matthias Mayer third

Vincent Kriechmayr won the men’s downhill in Italy at Val Gardena on Friday afternoon, with Marco Odermatt coming second and Matthias Mayer taking the final spot on the podium.

The 31-year-old Austrian competitor put down a time of 1:25.44 seconds to mark his country’s first World Cup win of the season, which has been dominated by the Swiss, Odermatt.

Before the weekend, Kriechmayr had stood in sixth place in the downhill, and his win gives him the chance of improving upon last season’s showing, where he also finished second.

Odermatt kept up his exceptional form this season as he was just 0.11s behind the winner.

So far he has failed to finish outside the podium places this season, as he carries on his brilliant performances towards Christmas.

His run on Friday was made even more impressive by the fact that the 25-year-old had not competed at the event before. As he sits in No. 1 in the Giant Slalom and overall, he might soon end up in a rare position of leading all three disciplines in the 2023 season.

The best the host country could manage was a 13th place finish for Florian Schieder, a little over half a second back from the race winner.

The final spot on the podium went to another Austrian, Mayer, an Olympic gold medallist. He was just 0.02s second behind Odermatt, completing an impressive showing for his country.

The event at Val Gardena was set up to replace the cancelled downhill at Beaver Creek. The opening few races of the 2022/23 season have been hit by a number of delays, postponements and cancellations and the FIS is attempting to mitigate the impact of poor weather and dangerous conditions by inserting replacement events during empty spots in the race calendar.

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