Kitzbühel: Canada’s Jack Crawford earns first career win at holy grail of ski racing Canada’s James Crawford scorched to a maiden World Cup victory in the prestigious Kitzbühel downhill on Saturday in a race thankfully spared the spate of serious crashes that marred the super-G. Crawford, with just four podium places to his name in seven seasons on the circuit, laid down a near-perfect run to clock 1min 53.64sec on the challenging 3.3km-long Streif course on the Hahnenkamm mountain overlooking the upmarket Austrian resort.
Crawford, a surprise winner of world super-G gold in Courchevel in 2023 and Olympic combined bronze medallist in Beijing the year previously, held on to bag €100,000 ($104,800) for his victory and set himself up nicely ahead of the 4-16 February world championships in Saalbach.
Amazing stuff, supreme excellence!” boomed the slopeside commentator of Crawford’s run in front of tens of thousands of baying ski fans in warm, sunny conditions.
Starting with bib number 20, Crawford hit motorway-coasting speeds of 140kmh, negotiating sections that have an 85% gradient and 80m jumps, all the while battling crippling centrifugal forces.
In-form Swiss racer Marco Odermatt, who tops the overall and downhill standings, won Friday’s super-G, but could only finish sixth in the blue riband event, at 0.55sec, as just eight-tenths of a second separated the top 13 racers.
