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On Saturday, Svindal had a slice of luck.
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#Franz klammer 1976 full
Downhill racing is a perilous business, and each of those winners knew the mixture of thrill and danger generated by the Lauberhorn’s final plunging S-bend, a feature that remains spectacular despite its contour being softened following the death there in 1991 of Gernot Reinstadler, a 21-year-old Austrian who flew into the safety nets at full speed and died of internal injuries. Last weekend Svindal added his name to a list of winners that includes Toni Sailer, Jean-Claude Killy, Franz Klammer and Bode Miller – and Bill Johnson, Miller’s US compatriot and the 1984 Olympic champion, whose death at the age of 55 was announced on Friday, 15 years after a training accident during a comeback attempt had permanently incapacitated him. It might not be as brutal or as terrifying as some downhills but it sets its own demands and, as with the Hahnenkamm, a win is as coveted as a Wimbledon title or a green jacket at the Masters. The highest velocities come on the Haneggschuss, two minutes into the race and close to the finish, when the buildup of lactic acid becomes excruciating. But its glory is not so much the wonderful scenery – which beguiled the poets Shelley and Byron a century before the racing began – as its sheer length.Ĭompetitors face almost two and three-quarter miles of thigh-burning effort, at speeds closing on 100mph. The roots of the Lauberhorn lie in the British invention of organised downhill racing in the early 1920s, when Wengen’s old-world hotels and chalets played host to an Oxford versus Cambridge contest while the locals were still competing among themselves on cross-country skis. Imagine falling down a lift shaft for two and a half minutes. He had dropped 3,300 feet – which is 600ft more than the height of the world’s tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa – at a rate of 23 feet per second. That day almost two decades ago the Italian skier averaged 61mph but perhaps more extraordinary was his average rate of vertical descent. It was won by Aksel Lund Svindal, giving the Norwegian skier his fourth victory in five downhills so far this season, but the weather still played a part.įog forced the organisers to shorten the course, allowing Svindal no chance to attack a record held since 1997 by Kristian Ghedina. The winter sports industry has suffered in recent years from the effects of climate change but this year’s big snowfall arrived in time for last Saturday’s 86th running of the Lauberhorn, another of the classic races of the downhill season.
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And around the world, more than a few people had discovered a cure for the midwinter blues. On the leaderboard, the No15 displaced the No3. As the Austrian crossed the line, his time came up. When Klammer’s red helmet rocketed into the view of the spectators at the finish, Russi noted that his rival was taking the last turn at an angle no one had tried before. But then, waiting at the bottom of the mountain, Russi heard the roar of 60,000 Austrian spectators and, in his own words, felt the mountain start to shake. Still, though, he trailed by a few hundredths of a second at the first and second intermediate time-checks. Old-timers, taught to lock their skis together in neat parallel turns, recoiled at the way all the rules of style and balance were abandoned in one man’s juddering, flailing battle with gravity and centrifugal force. The course was being attacked head-on and it responded by biting back, forcing Klammer into lurid feats of last-ditch recovery. Within the first 15 seconds it became apparent to anyone watching from the warmth and safety of their front room that here was a man willing to go beyond the limits of control.