Swiss standout Marco Odermatt earned his fourth World Cup Crystal Globe of the season Sunday in anticlimactic circumstances as the final race was cancelled due to bad weather in Saalbach, Austria.
The start of the men’s downhill was initially pushed back several times because of snow and wind, while organisers continued to work on the course in Saalbach, Austria. But it was officially cancelled more than an hour after it was scheduled to start.
“Unfortunately due to the present weather situation with wind and snowfall affecting the track conditions, to insure the safety of the athletes, todays Men’s DH had been cancelled,” the ski federation said on X, formerly Twitter.
The cancellation handed Odermatt his first World Cup downhill title as his 42-point lead over French skier Cyprien Sarrazin, the only man who could catch him in the standings, proved enough.
But it denied the 26-year-old the chance to set a men’s record points total. Victory in the downhill would have given Odermatt 100 points and lifted him five points beyond his record 2,042 tally set last season.
Odermatt locked up his third straight overall championship and the giant slalom title weeks ago and lifted the super-G Crystal Globe on Friday.
Aleksander Aamodt Kilde had won the downhill crystal globe the previous two years but his season was prematurely ended when he was among a slew of World Cup, Olympic and world champions to crash hard in a packed January program.
Sunday’s weather was a contrast to the women’s downhill, which took place under blue skies and with a temperature of 15 C the previous day.
Odermatt’s compatriot Lara Gut-Behrami was also chasing a quadruple but Cornelia Huetter pipped her to the downhill title for her first crystal globe.
Source Agencies
