Alpine Skiing | Aspen World Cup: Drivers’ protest ends relegation scandal in Aspen

Alpine Skiing | World Cup in Aspen

Status: 03/03/2023 8:51 PM

The overseas trip to the United States started with the cancellation of the departure. After less than 25 drivers, the pacers boycotted the competition.

Dirk Hofmeister

The slope from Aspen (USA) has been canceled on Friday (03/03/2023) due to increasingly bad conditions with snow, wind and fog. After 24 drivers, the remaining finishers threatened a boycott, which is why the race director stopped the competition. Officially, the competition ended prematurely due to bad weather.

At this point, the Norwegian Adrian Smiseth Sejersted was in the lead. Taking advantage of a low starting number, the 28-year-old was first in the 2.75km Rothes Run. With his time of 1:31.24 minutes, the top competitors also gnawed their teeth at the ranks. Josef Verstel was the best German in seventh place (+1.93 seconds). He was also allowed to start fourth with a low start number.

Verstel missed out on his second best finish of the season due to a demolition. Sejersted had long hoped for the first World Cup victory in his career. After 75 minutes, in which only 24 drivers managed to start, the jury ended the unfair competition. At least 30 drivers had to start being listed in the standings.

An expression of the uneven conditions that ultimately led to the demolition: Downhill World Champion Marco Odermatt of Switzerland with starting number 15 had no chance of pole position and finished 2.64 seconds behind the top ten. While Sejersted was able to accelerate to 124.9 km/h at the bottom of the track, Odermatt only had a top speed of 118.5 km/h on the same lane.

In addition to Verstel, the Germans Romid Baumann, Thomas Dresen, The fastest in the training of Andreas Sander And Dominic Schweiger at first. But with their high starting numbers, they also had no chance of securing a top spot.

For a quick weekend in Aspen, one of the most popular ski areas in the United States, there’s another Descent on Saturday (March 4, 2023, from 7 p.m.) and Super G on Sunday (March 5, 2023, from 6 p.m.) on the program.