Two days after his World Championship title in the parallel event, Alexander Schmid is hopelessly behind at halftime in the giant slalom. The demanding slope caused a large spread.
Only three drivers within a second and the eighth-placed already two seconds behind: The giant slalom at the Alpine World Ski Championships in Courchevel on Friday (February 17th, 2023) did not bring the hoped-for tension at halftime. The route was very selective – and that was also the undoing of German world champion Alexander Schmid. After one of two runs, Austrian Marco Schwarz leads.
The slope on the L’Éclipse in Courchevel was extremely icy groomed, the course was set to rotate and was therefore rather slow. So it was about having a grippy ski in these conditions.
Schmid does not get a train in his course
Parallel world champion Schmid didn’t have this in the first round and couldn’t carry the momentum of his coup with him to the much longer course two days earlier. He made several mistakes and slides in his run, which ultimately cost him a lot of time. At the finish he was already more than three seconds behind the leader.
“I couldn’t get a move from top to bottom, never got the momentum to score. This adds up when you stand on the edge for a long time and can’t get off properly. The backlog is huge“, said Schmid. Now he wants to talk to his service man during the break to see what can be changed in the material. He also wants to drive a little more aggressively in the final.
Black leads before favorite Odermatt
The Austrian Schwarz coped best with the difficult conditions. “It felt pretty good from the first goals. The starting position is quite good“, said the combined world champion of 2021. Black needed 1: 19.47 minutes for his passage, was 0.58 seconds faster than top favorite Marco Odermatt – the Swiss had won four of the six giant slalom competitions this winter. Third is Zan Kranjec from Slovenia (+0.76 sec.).
The second German starter Fabian Gratz had big problems with the track, found no grip and finished with a deficit of more than five and a half seconds.