Marco Odermatt closes in on downhill season title after winning first World Cup race since Olympics

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GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (AP) — Marco Odermatt has taken a giant step towards retaining his World Cup downhill title this season, leading a Swiss sweep Saturday in the first men’s race since the Milan Cortina Olympics.

More good news for Odermatt was that his closest challenger, teammate and Olympic gold medalist Franjo van Allmen, was not part of the Swiss trio on the podium.

Odermatt just barely edged out Alexis Monney by 0.04 seconds, with Stefan Rogentin coming 0.98 seconds behind in third. Austria’s Vincent Kriechmayr and Italy’s Giovanni Franzoni shared fourth.

Von Allmen had costly mistakes halfway through his run down the Kandahar course and finished 1.47 second behind in sixth.

The result means Odermatt increased his lead over von Allmen to 175 points in the season standings with two races remaining. A race win is worth 100 points.

It felt like redemption for Odermatt, who arrived at the Olympics as a gold-medal favourite in the downhill but finished fourth.

“It was certainly a bit of a revenge today, too,” said Odermatt, who won the World Cup downhill title the past two seasons and is also a strong favourite to win his fifth straight overall Crystal Globe this year.

The fascinating duel between close friends Odermatt and von Allmen has dominated the downhill season.

Odermatt started his campaign with back-to-back wins and later added a victory at the classic Wengen event, but von Allmen hit back with two wins, including the last race before the Olympics a month ago in Crans-Montana, where Odermatt failed to make the podium.

On Saturday, though, von Allmen could not keep up with his rival.

“I was a little bit too direct, also not central with my body, sat down in the back, and was pretty tired. In the end, too direct and not smooth enough,” said von Allmen, who was one of Alpine skiing's stars of the Olympics with three golds from the downhill, super-G and team combined.

Odermatt's 54th career win put him level with Austrian great Hermann Maier in third position on the men’s World Cup winners list. Only Ingemar Stenmark (86 wins) and Marcel Hirscher (67) won more races. The overall record is held by American standout Mikaela Shiffrin with 108 World Cup wins.

“My idol always was Didier Cuche when I was a kid,” Odermatt said. “But it’s incredible to get level with Hermann.”

Several skiers sat out the race a day after they crashed in the final training session Friday, most notably France's Nils Alphand and Finland’s Elian Lehto.

The French ski federation said Alphand sustained a right shoulder and rib injury and would be out for at least three weeks. Lehto suffered “injuries to the chest area and lower limb that require hospital monitoring” but “are not life-threatening,” the Finnish ski federation said on Instagram.

A super-G on the same hill is scheduled for Sunday.

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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing