There were numerous falls at the Alpine Ski World Cup in the Olympic town of Cortina d’Ampezzo. Top ski racers like Mikaela Shiffrin were also injured after an accident. Criticism was immediately made about the conditions and the route – wrongly, says German ski icon Markus Wasmeier.
The descent in Cortina d’Ampezzo was overshadowed by numerous serious crashes last weekend.
Superstar Mikaele Shiffrin, for example, lost his balance after a bump on the Tofana track on Friday. She fell and crashed into the safety net. She was then able to give the all-clear and the American is now working on her comeback again. The Swiss Corinne Suter was also hit.
The next day, several female ski racers fell again in stormy weather conditions, and her compatriot Isabella Wright had to be taken to hospital by helicopter. Canadian Válerie Grenier also had a bad time in the Super-G, breaking her upper arm and tearing her cruciate ligament. A total of 35 drivers were eliminated from the three races in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
Many crashes in Italy: “All extreme driving and line errors”
“It was standard in my time,” said two-time Olympic champion Markus Wasmeier in an interview with “Sport1,” but remained unimpressed by the large number of falls and failures. Instead of criticizing poor piste conditions, he sees the athletes in focus: “When I look at the mistakes from Cortina, they were all extreme driving and line errors. That surprised me a bit.”
It’s possible, according to Wasmeier, that individual ski racers were “a bit overwhelmed on this route” because “everything was actually perfect – the slope was great, the course too, the visibility was okay.” Ultimately, “mistakes” happened that “shouldn’t have happened to people like Mikaela Shiffrin.”
In the 60-year-old’s opinion, blaming the world association FIS for filling up the calendar with more and more races and thus demanding too much work from the athletes is also exaggerated. “Every athlete rides these routes voluntarily and can decide without pressure from the association whether they want to start or not. Everyone knows the risk, that was already the case in my time,” said the two-time Olympic gold medalist in Lillehammer in 1994.