BORMIO, Italy –
On Wednesday, Vincent Kriechmayr raced for two minutes on one of the most demanding downhill courses in the world.
The Austrian world champion skied perfectly over the icy and bumpy 2,268 kilometers of the Stelvio to win the last men’s downhill World Cup of 2022.
It was Kriechmayr’s 14th World Cup victory and his seventh in downhill.
Canadian James Crawford was 0.40 seconds behind in second and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde was 0.28 behind in third.
Norwegian skier Kilde was downhill world champion last season and has won three of the previous four downhills this season, with Kriechmayr the only other winner – at another Italian resort, Val Garena, two weeks ago.
On Wednesday, Kriechmayr managed to stay out of trouble on the tough course, which will be used for the men’s downhill at the 2026 Olympics.
Despite the many bumps and rolls, he kept full control and never left his racing line, while most of his rivals struggled on parts of their runs.
“Winning here means a lot. It’s one of the classic events and every ski racer dreams of winning it once,” said Kriechmayr, who has already scored three podiums on the Stelvio without a win.
“Today was definitely my best race here. I wasn’t the fastest in the last section, but it was a reasonable race.”
After winning three runs this season and setting the fastest time by far in Tuesday’s final practice, Kilde was widely considered the favourite.
However, he had never achieved top-three results on the Stelvio. He was behind Kriechmayr’s time throughout his race and narrowly avoided a crash when he quickly regained his balance towards the end.
“Vince was just too good today,” Kilde said. “It was a good race but not good enough.”
Overall World Cup leader Marco Odermatt was fourth at 1.46 and didn’t lose much ground to Kilde in the standings. The Swiss skier is still 261 points ahead of his rival.
Ryan Cochran-Siegle was the top American in fifth, 1.87 behind Kriechmayr, while six-time record-breaking Italian Dominik Paris finished 10th.
Two Olympic downhill champions, Switzerland’s Beat Feuz (2022) and Austria’s Matthias Mayer (2014), have missed the race due to illness. Last week, Feuz announced that he would retire next month.
The event started after a 10-minute delay after one of the precursors, who was testing the course before a race, crashed and the safety net had to be reinstalled.
A super-G on Thursday is the final race of the 2022 Men’s World Cup.
“Gamer. Introvert. Problem solver. Creator. Thinker. Lifelong food evangelist. Alcohol advocate.”