Ferstl’s fall and Dreßen’s comeback

VThe German skiers at the World Cup downhill this Friday were far away from a Dreßen effect at the home race in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Thomas Dreßen, the winner of the previous year, was on his first appearance in the World Cup after his hip operation only as a forerunner for safety reasons.

And his teammates, who were in such good shape recently, could not convince when their leader returned. Josef Ferstl left the most lasting impression – albeit involuntarily. Ferstl was well on the slightly shortened downhill run for about a minute, but then after a route that was a bit too daring, he couldn’t keep his balance and took off. Ferstl flew across the Seilbahnstadl jump, slammed backwards onto the slope and rushed into the safety fences with such force that the reconstruction team was then occupied a good twenty minutes to repair the damage. The muscularly well trained athlete survived the spectacular takeoff unharmed. He was able to free himself from the chaos of nets and skied the rest of the slope, albeit with sagging shoulders. “The pain is coming slowly,” he confessed at the finish, but gave the all-clear: “Both knees are okay. I was still lucky. ”To be on the safe side, he went to the hospital to have the sore hip and ankle examined.

His teammates weren’t in a good mood either. The otherwise so reliable Andreas Sander landed after a botched ride, almost two and a half seconds behind, in 24th, just one place ahead of Simon Jocher. Romed Baumann also failed to meet his expectations with rank 14. The best German was surprisingly Dominik Schwaiger, who except for one mistake in the lower part showed a passable drive and confirmed his result from Kitzbühel in twelfth place. “The shape is right at the moment,” said Schwaiger with satisfaction.

But he was also far from the winners’ podium, which, despite the best efforts of the organizers, could of course also be explained by the condition of the slope at almost ten degrees plus and heavy rain in the past few days. The favorites with the low numbers on their jerseys drove to the podium: Car number five Dominik Paris (Italy) won with almost four tenths of a second ahead of Beat Feuz and Matthias Mayer (Austria) from Switzerland, who started with numbers three and one. The time of the ancestor Dreßen was not communicated.