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Hudec heard the crowd and knew his run was good.
around two hours to start so that’s good — and nice for the coaches. I look forward to being
part of the atmosphere.”
Austrian Romed Baumann had his best downhill race of the weekend a day late. On Sunday,
Feb. 5, in the combined, on the full length of La Verte des Houches, he clocked in 2:01.58.
That was 1.28 seconds faster than Saturday and 2.72 faster than Friday. For sure it was a different day, but no one came
close to his time, and he won
the combined because of it.
It wasn’t the downhill win he
wanted, but it was his second
career win.
“I just wanted a clean slalom
run without a big mistake,” he
said.
Chamonix has hosted combined events since the beginning of alpine racing history
and this may have been the
last with the FIS expected
to sweep combined off the
World Cup schedule in the future and no race at Chamonix
on the provisional schedules
for next season.
It was tough to generate
much excitement for the slalom leg as Baumann had a massive lead and not many slalom ski-
ers could make the top 30 to get a reasonable shot at him in a single run.
The best of them was Alexis Pinturault, but at 27th in the downhill, he was three and three-
quarters seconds out. Twenty-five skiers took aim at him and failed to overcome his two-run
time. In the end, Baumann’s downhill leg left him with the win by more than a second.
The shock of the day was Ivica Kostelic. The winner in six of the seven previous Cup com-
bined races could not get it going in slalom and finished a distant seventh.
Erik Fisher got his first career combined points in 23rd.
After missing the downhill win, Romed Baumann
was pleased with the combined trophy.
Canada’s three-man team (Hudec,
Thomsen and Guay, from left) had
plenty to celebrate.
