Hirscher of Austria grabs elusive gold medal

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February 14, 2018 3:18 AM

At the World Cup races late last month, Marcel Hirscher of Austria told his longtime American rival Ted Ligety that he was planning to skip the Alpine combined event at the Winter Olympics.

Ligety laughed at Hirscher and told him he would see him at the race’s starting gate.

Hirscher, ski racing’s most dominant athlete since 2011, has had a tangled relationship with the Olympics. For all his many accomplishments, which include a record six consecutive World Cup overall titles and 55 World Cup victories, an Olympic gold medal had eluded him, an outcome that vexed him after two previous Olympic appearances.

It had gotten to the point that Hirscher preferred to make jokes about whether he would ever win a gold medal.

“We have enough Olympic champions from Austria,” Hirscher said with a shrug of his shoulders when asked late last season about his expectations for the 2018 Games.

But there is now one more Austrian Alpine Olympic champion and he is most certainly glad he showed up for the first Alpine event of the Pyeongchang Games.

“I have my big gold medal,” Hirscher said with a wide grin late Tuesday after defeating Alexis Pinturault of France by 0.23 seconds in the Alpine combined, which includes one run of downhill and one run of slalom. Victor Muffat-Jeandet, Pinturault’s teammate, won bronze.

Asked how often he had been questioned about whether he would ever win at the Olympics, Hirscher, 28, answered, “I mean, every day, but now it’s over.”

Hirscher’s victory came on a windblown day when he unexpectedly finished in 12th place in the morning downhill portion, which is not his strength. But the gusting conditions had forced officials to shorten the downhill course, which benefited Hirscher. Then, in the afternoon slalom stage, Hirscher was at his finest, vastly outperforming the field.

And so the gap in Hirscher’s splendid racing résumé was filled. Hirscher’s victory was also the 115th Olympic Alpine medal for an Austrian skier, the most by any nation in any sport at the Winter Games.

The New York Times

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