The Italian Mattia Casse offered himself his first victory in the Alpine Ski World Cup at 34 years old, by winning the super-G in Val Gardena (Italy) with a 1/100th lead over his first pursuer on Friday.
Casse, already very visible during the two official training sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday, disgusted the other big names in the discipline. But he had a big scare when the American Jared Goldberg, starting with bib 26 and taking advantage of an improvement in conditions, with a more favorable wind, tumbled and almost deprived him of victory.
Third place went to Swiss Marco Odermatt, 3rd, 43/100ths behind Casse. « Odi »winner of the last three editions of the World Cup, is still chasing his first success at Val Gardena, one of the rare tracks on the circuit which still resists him.
The Austrian Vincent Kriechmayr, winner of the Val Gardena super-G just a year ago and 2021 world champion in the specialty, finished more than a second behind Casse (12th).
The super-G of Val Gardena did not smile on Cyprien Sarrazin: the leader of the French team, second in the first super-G of the winter in Beaver Creek (United States), made a mistake after only 35 seconds of racing.
Nils Allegre ranked 7th, 63/100th behind Casse, 20/100th off the podium, his teammate Blaise Giezendanner 9th.
Casse’s best result so far on the world circuit was three 3rd places, including the first, in December 2022, during the Val Gardena descent on the same Saslong.
Unlike the other super-G specialists, the Italian, who started with bib 10 before a temporary deterioration in weather conditions, was not disturbed by the changes that occurred on the track after Thursday’s snowfall.
In the general classification of the World Cup, before the descent of Val Gardena on Saturday, Odermatt came back to 50 points behind the Norwegian Henrik Kristoffersen (340 against 390 pts) who will be on the track Sunday and Monday for the giant and slalom of Alta Badia , still in Italy.
