Hirscher only ranked 46th out of 50 drivers. A total of 81 runners took part. For Hirscher, the slalom world was only okay for the first few goals. Then he thought, “It’s going to be spiffy anyway. But then it quickly turned into one of the worst slalom rides of my life. I had no grip, it was really a struggle,” said the Salzburg player.
“It was completely not what I was hoping for. What remains are a few beautiful days. I have great memories of the reindeer and the far north. What we took with us to Austria was the realization that we were obviously grossly wrong on the ice today,” said Hirscher.
Marcel Hirscher about his comeback slalom
Marcel Hirscher missed the second round of his slalom comeback in Levi. Hirscher, who started for the Netherlands, finished 46th.
Lots of open questions to answer
Before the next slalom next Sunday (10.30 a.m./1.30 p.m., live on ORF1 and in the live stream) in Gurgl, there is a lot to do and a lot of unanswered questions to be answered: “I think the phones are going to be hot now. What are we going to do in the next few days? Where do we train? What are the conditions in Gurgl? Is it as icy there as it is today?”
Of course, Hirscher imagined the race in Levi to be different. “But I watched the first runners on TV for a bit. Some of the top runners didn’t have it so good, others did great,” said the 35-year-old. “But that’s the way it is. It was clear that when you come back after such a long time, there will be days when you are not right.”
Levi was “very special”
When asked what the difference was from the start of the season in Sölden, when he qualified for the second run straight away and came 23rd in the final ranking, Hirscher explained that it could very well be attributed to the conditions. “If there had been ice like that in the giant slalom, we would probably have been next to it,” he said. Levi was “very special and very insightful” for Hirscher. “I’ve already fought hard to get down there somehow.”
