Italy, Feb 12 (AFP/APP): Dominik Paris topped the first downhill training run at the world championships in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Friday, but was one of many racers to take aim at the course setting.
Paris was credited with 1min 40.78sec down the course, albeit having missed a gate that would have seen him disqualified from a race proper. Racers will get another training run on Saturday before the blue riband event of alpine skiing itself on Sunday.
The 2.6km-long Vertigine course, Paris argued, was “very turny” and more like a technical giant slalom in the mid-section where setters had sought to reduce speeds going into a jump that proved problematic in Thursday’s super-G, a shorter speed event on the same slope.
“Maybe they need to change, all the athletes have asked,” said the Italian who finished fifth in the super-G, a little more than a year after blowing his knee in Kitzbuehel. “It’s not a downhill setting.”
American Bryce Bennett was more outspoken, calling the course setting “terrible, atrocious. It’s not downhill skiing”. “I don’t like that at all,” said Bennett, who finished 27th in the super-G.
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