The Men’s Alpine Skiing World Cup is this weekend in Korea, at the brand-new Jeongseon Alpine Centre. Jeongseon will host the downhill, super-G, and alpine combined events of the 2018 Winter Olympics. This weekend’s downhill and super-G races are a chance to test the new venue while racing for World Cup points.
The defending downhill World Cup champion Kjetil Jansrud of Norway achieved his season-first downhill victory in Jeongseon. He beat the second-placed Dominik Paris of Italy by 0.20 seconds.
Steven Nyman of the USA finished third in Jeongseon; his first podium finish outside Val Gardena or Beaver Creek. He made mistakes on the bottom section that cost him tenths, denying a better result. At the last split, he was only 0.09 seconds behind the winner Jansrud and 0.23 seconds ahead of Paris, yet he crossed the finish line 0.41 seconds behind Jansrud and 0.21 behind Paris. The second and third places were the season-first podium finishes for both Paris and Nyman.
Second in the downhill World Cup standings, Peter Fill of Italy finished the race in fourth place, 0.49 seconds from Jansrud. That was enough for Fill to remain in the second place and he reduced the gap to the injured leader Aksel Lund Svindal to 71 points with three downhills remaining. If all remaining downhill races get run as scheduled, Svindal is likely to lose the lead by the end of the season.
However, Jansrud jumped from sixth place into third in the downhill standings and reduced the gap to Fill by 50 points to 38 points. Adrien Théaux of France is in fourth place of the downhill standings; he finished eighth in Jeongseon and the gap to Fill grew to 64 points. Another Frenchman, Guillermo Fayed, started his season well and was as high as second in the downhill standings. However, he has struggled recently and the 10th place in Jeongseon was his first top-10 finish after last three downhills where he missed the top 20. Still, the gap to lead grew and he is now 163 points behind Svindal and 92 points behind Fill.
Beat Feuz of Switzerland continues his strong injury comeback; while he couldn’t extend last two downhill races’ podium streak, he finished in fifth place, 0.49 seconds from lead.
The winner of the previous downhill race in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway, lost a ski early in his run and couldn’t finish the race. Second-placed of Garmisch, another promising young skier, Boštjan Kline of Slovenia got a decent result in Jeongseon; while the bib No. 30 wasn’t ideal, an 11th place helps him to gain positions in the start list ranking and get better start numbers in future races.
Men’s World Cup continues in Jeongseon with a super-G race on Sunday at 12:00 pm local time / Saturday 9:00 pm Eastern Time.