Jasmine Flury produced the third serious surprise at the World Alpine Skiing Championships in Courchevel and Meribel after triumphing in the women’s downhill. For the Swiss, this is the first victory in this discipline at the highest level, and until now she had only one podium in it – 2nd place in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany) last January.
This is the third surprise in a row at the World Alpine Skiing Championships in the French Alps, after the two in the super-giant slaloms for women and men, where the titles were won respectively by Marta Bassino (Italy) in the women’s category and James Crawford (Canada) in the men’s category.
Jasmine Flury had a very solid run but she wasn’t the fastest in any of the five sectors. However, she still managed to be fast enough in each of them to win the gold. Finishing just 0.04 sec behind her was Nina Ortlieb (Austria), who was fastest in the first two sectors where she opened up a lead of 0.18 sec, but lost as much as 0.22 sec in the third, which proved fatal to her chances of victory.
The bronze medal went to Cortina d’Ampezzo 2021 champion Corinne Zutter (Switzerland), who was 0.12 sec slower than her teammate Jasmine Flury. Like Nina Ortlieb, Corinne Zutter also registered her biggest loss in the third sector of the track, where she was 0.13 sec slower than the new world champion.
The two Austrians Cornelia Hetter and Mirjam Puchner shared fourth place, 0.37 sec behind the winner. Sixth place went to the two-time world champion in the discipline from Saint Moritz 2017 and Ore 2019 Ilka Stuhec (Slovenia), who was 0.42 sec behind Jasmine Flury.
The big favorite for the gold medal, Sofia Goggia (Italy), was disqualified because she missed a gate shortly before the final. The Italian made a mediocre and error-filled descent anyway, in which she was 0.47 sec slower than the champion.
