SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM, Austria (AP) — Franjo von Allmen became a double world champion and Loic Meillard claimed his fourth career world championship medal when the Swiss pair won gold in the new team combined event on Wednesday.
They led a Swiss sweep of the podium at the worlds, 0.27 seconds ahead of silver medalists Alexis Monney and Tanguy Nef.
Stefan Rogentin and Marc Rochat were 0.43 behind and took bronze.
“Totally crazy, three Swiss teams on the podium is amazing,” said Meillard, who raced the slalom after Von Allmen had done the downhill some three hours earlier.
“I think everyone on the team is going crazy,” added Meillard, who has a silver and two bronzes from previous worlds.
After waiting for Nef to come down, Monney leaped over four rows of barriers and ran into the finish area to embrace his teammate to celebrate their silver medal as the six-man Swiss party got started.
“Incredibly cool, not just my performance but the performance of the entire Swiss team," Monney said. “To be on the podium with six Swiss skiers is something for history.”
Earlier Wednesday, Monney posted the fastest time in the downhill portion, giving his teammate Nef a slim advantage of 0.02 seconds over Meillard to start the slalom.
However, Meillard completed his slalom run nearly three-tenths of a second faster than Nef.
“I was way more nervous than when I race just for myself,” Meillard said. “You want to perform well, also for your teammate.”
It is the first Swiss sweep of a men’s podium at the worlds since Peter Mueller, Pirmin Zurbriggen and Karl Alpiger won gold, silver and bronze in the downhill at their home 1987 worlds in Crans Montana.
And underlining the strength of Swiss ski racing, the nation occupied the top-six spots in a downhill on the lower-ranked European Cup circuit on Wednesday.
It's the third gold medal for the Swiss team at these worlds after Marco Odermatt won the super-G and Von Allmen the downhill, while Monney took bronze in the downhill. Switzerland won silver in the mixed-team parallel event last week.
“Incredibly cool,” said Von Allmen, who is on a breakout season with four World Cup podiums, including a super-G victory in Wengen.
The 23-year-old Von Allmen said his recent results were a surprise for himself.
“I am still satisfied with any top-10 result, that is still good for me in my second World Cup season,” he said. “What is happening here, I can’t put it into words.”
Von Allmen struggled early in his downhill run when he came off the race line and skied into the soft snow outside the blue lines. He just managed to make the next gate and then made up almost all of the time he lost there.
“That can happen, I tried to make the best out of it,” said Von Allmen. “At the bottom I thought about Loic and tried to give everything.”
Von Allmen said he had “a bit more space in his helmet” as he and the entire Swiss downhill team shaved hair off their heads after its successes in Sunday’s downhill.
Odermatt skipped the team combined, opting to prepare for the giant slalom on Friday, but the Swiss star attended the race and joined in the celebrations.
The team combined entails one racer competing in a downhill run and another in a slalom, with their two times added up to determine the final results.
The team combined will make its debut at next year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics.
The American team of Ryan Cochran-Siegle in the downhill and Benjamin Ritchie in the slalom finished fourth and missed a medal by 0.26 seconds, a day after Mikaela Shiffrin and Breezy Johnson won gold in the women’s event.
Cochran-Siegle was on the brink of matching his mother, Barbara Cochran, who won a world championship medal in 1970 — a silver in slalom. They both are Olympic medalists: he won super-G silver in 2022, she took slalom gold 50 years earlier.
Italy 1, with downhiller Dominik Paris and slalom racer Alex Vinatzer, was 0.46 seconds behind in third after the downhill portion.
But Vinatzer straddled a gate and became one of the nine slalom skiers that failed to finish their run. Olympic slalom gold medalist Clement Noel of France and World Cup discipline champion Manuel Feller of Austria were among the skiers that straddled a gate.
The next race is the women's giant slalom on Thursday, which defending champion Shiffrin will sit out as she feels not ready yet to compete in GS following her crash in November.
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing
The Associated Press
