Switzerland’s Beat Feuz sent the home fans wild as he won downhill gold at the Alpine skiing world championships on Sunday, a day after celebrating his 30th birthday.
ST MORITZ, Switzerland Switzerland’s Beat Feuz sent the home fans wild as he won downhill gold at the Alpine skiing world championships on Sunday, a day after celebrating his 30th birthday.
Canadian veteran Erik Guay, bidding to follow his surprise victory in the super-G, was second, with Austria’s Max Franz third.
After compatriot and reigning world champion Patrick Kueng and Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud had set identical times to lead, Feuz, the 13th man down, produced a powerful descent down the icy course to go 0.39 seconds quicker.
He then watched anxiously in the finish area as Guay went quickest on the intermediate split times but finished 0.12 seconds slower. Franz was 0.37 seconds back.
“It’s unbelievable, to do this in Switzerland,” said Feuz, who took a world championships bronze medal in downhill at Beaver Creek in 2015. “My feeling was good this morning. The crowd was amazing and lifted me.”
One of the first to congratulate Feuz was Swiss tennis great Roger Federer, who last month won an 18th grand slam title at the Australian Open.
The blue riband race, canceled on Saturday because of poor visibility, began from a lower start gate after clouds again made the top section too dangerous.
Feuz won the World Cup downhill and super-G on the same course a year ago and again found it to his liking, mastering the bumps and jumps to find the quickest line down.
He is the first Swiss skier to win a world title on home snow since Peter Muller in 1987.
The 35-year-old Guay, who on Wednesday became the oldest world champion when he took the super-G gold, was also immaculate and felt he could have taken a second victory
“Perhaps I could have gone a little quicker in the lower sections but then I maybe would have crashed – that’s always the balance you have to achieve,” he said.
“That was a lot of pressure on Beat in front of his own crowd, you’ve got to take your hat off to him because that’s a great performance because people were already hanging the gold medal around his neck.”
(Reporting by Martyn Herman- Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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