Austria was last this bad in 1987

With three silver and four bronze medals at the World Championships in France, the Austrian ski racers have so far recorded the second-largest yield of all nations in terms of numbers. However, the successes are not reflected in the medal table - the Alpine nation only ranks eighth before the final slalom race. What is missing is gold. Austria is threatened with the worst performance at a World Cup in 36 years.

At that time, at the 1987 World Championships in Crans-Montana, eight of the ten titles went to Switzerland, the slalom was won by the German Frank Wörndl and the combination by the Luxembourger Marc Girardelli. After that, Austria always won at least one gold medal at major events. Sometimes it was Marco Schwarz, sometimes it was Vincent Kriechmayr, often it was alpine legend Marcel Hirscher. In Méribel and Courchevel it does not want to work out with a title so far.

Schwarz started the second run of the giant slalom on Friday as the leader - and then fell back to third place. In the combination he was missing ten hundredths of a second to gold. Nina Ortlieb finished second in the downhill, 0.04 seconds behind. In the parallel race, the German Alexander Schmid relegated the Tyrolean Dominik Raschner to second place.

Roswitha Stadlober, President of the Austrian Ski Association, assessed the results so far as somewhat positive. "It's about the number of medals. We have a few, but of course there's no gold - that's the way it is," said the 59-year-old.

Before the final two slaloms on Saturday and Sunday, the chances of an Austrian World Cup triumph are slim. For women, the title only leads to US star Mikaela Shiffrin. After the first round, she is 0.19 seconds ahead of the second-placed Swiss Wendy Holdener. The Norwegians and Swiss are the favorites for the men on Sunday.

Mikaela Shiffrin won her first gold at the World Cup in France. The favorite American won the giant slalom in Meribel, her second medal after her second place in the Super-G.

Source: SID