Keystone
The World Ski Championships in Courchevel and Méribel bring two weeks of sunshine – and the Swiss seven medals, three of them gold. “We’re first in the medal table, so the World Cup was clearly a success,” says Swiss Ski President Urs Lehmann.
Due to the performances in the World Cup, where Switzerland leads the nations classification before the last third of the season with a large lead over Austria, it is no surprise that Swiss-Ski came off as number 1 World Cup nation. On the other hand, “the expectations of us were generally very high, we felt that,” as Lehmann put it. However, the long-standing association boss did not shiver due to the rather restrained start to the World Championships in Courchevel and Méribel – with only one silver medal following the first four races.
Peace on the inside, nervousness only on the outside
According to President Lehmann, the phase in which, following Wendy Holdener’s silver medal at the start of the World Championships in the combination, there were no more Swiss top 3 places in the next three races caused any unrest. “We already anticipated such a scenario in the planning. Internally, things stayed calm, the team and the coaches did an excellent job of keeping the emotions low and with a clear focus. The nervousness was more outside of the fans and the media.”
Keystone
At the same time, the Aargauer knows regarding his own rules of title fights. “At a major event, the clocks are always reset to zero.” In France, too, there were once more many surprises. But he might say “that our athletes have delivered once more. The Swiss team has even achieved some historic achievements.” He therefore rates this World Championships as “very successful, despite the two final slaloms that did not bring us any more medals”.
Three titles like in Cortina and St. Moritz
In fact, it was the most successful Swiss World Championships since 1989 in terms of the value of the medals. Back then in Vail, as most recently in St. Moritz 2017 and Cortina d’Ampezzo 2021, the Swiss anthem was heard three times this year in France. This is thanks to double world champion Marco Odermatt, who managed the extremely rare World Championship double of downhill and giant slalom within five days, and downhill world champion Jasmine Flury.
The mood of the Austrians was completely different – at least regarding the title – and they were unable to achieve the long-awaited triumph in the final slalom, despite Manuel Feller’s half-time lead. The last time the nation, which had dominated for decades, was world championships without gold medals was in Crans-Montana in 1987. Seven medals, three silver and four bronze, nevertheless ensured that the ÖSV did not immediately have crisis talks. But because seven different nations won at least one title, Austria was only ranked 8th in the medal table.
Medal table of the World Championships in Courchevel and Méribel
- 1. Schweiz: 3x???? 3x???? 1x????
- 2. Norwegen: 2x???? 3x???? 4x ????
- 3. USA: 2x???? 2x???? 0x????
- 4. Italien: 2x???? 1x???? 1x????
- 5. Kanada: 2x???? 0x???? 2x????
- 6. Germany and France: 1x???? 0x???? 1x???? each
- 8. Austria: 0x???? 3x???? 4x????
- 9. Greece: 0x???? 1x???? 0x????
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