02 MAR 2001 > Men's Downhill
10th Win for Hermann Maier; Rahlves DQ'd
Race Results

Hermann Maier is in such good form that he even wins races he doesn't hope to dominate. Here in Kvitfjell, Norway, the Austrian celebrated one of his best and most unexpected successes on the 1994 Olympic course in the seventh World Cup downhill of the season.

Only 37th in the last training run in which he lost almost three seconds on the fastest skiers, "The Herminator" surprised himself by clocking the fastest time at the end of a clean run down the "Olympiabakke" run where USA's Tommy Moe clinched gold seven years ago.

He didn't believe his eyes while checking the timing board when he saw that he beat by a few hundredths of a second Germany's newcomer Florian Eckert, a promising 3rd three weeks ago at the Worlds at St. Anton. Lasse Kjus, a winner here in 1996 and 1997, reached his best result of the year 2001 in coming in 3rd.

But this race was also marked by the tough disqualification of America's Daron Rahlves, the double winner here last year who set the fourth best time. Unfortunately, the Californian made a mistake when he tied a knot at the back of his too large racing bib. The Austrian and Swiss teams protested and the race jury had to DQ him after the competition because the International Ski Racing Rules don't allow any alteration of a bib in order to prevent any cheating.

It's quite a dramatic punishment for the super G World Champion from Truckee who badly needs some good results in the event in order to reinforce his position in the start list for the coming winter. So far, Daron only finished twice among the top-10, at Kitzbühel where he was 4th and at St. Anton where he came in 5th. He is 11th overall with two more downhill races on his program.

Rahlves was astonished and disappointed by his disqualification which he didn't expect after arriving at the finish line with the best time.

"The bibs are far too big for people like me and to remain as aerodynamic as possible in the last gliding section, I decided to put a knot in it, " he explained. "I had a solid run, not as perfect as I wished, but still good enough for a top-5 results which was fine. I couldn't imagine that I would break the rules in doing this."

The irony is that other skiers, such as Canada's Ed Podivinsky had the same idea, but he was not disqualified because the other trainers didn't see it. Anyway he only clocked the 34th best time just behind Chad Fleischer, the best US skier today.

The US team decided to appeal the decision at the FIS (International Ski Federation) arguing that the bibs were larger than the normal ones used on the World Cup tour.

"I feel pretty cool and I'm still enjoying what I'm doing. It's fun to compete when you win...."

So Daron will try to fight back tomorrow in the second downhill here. But he will have a tough time beating Maier. The 29-year-skier from Flachau was especially elated by his latest win.

"I never expected this to happen. I was convinced to have no chance so I was quite relaxed in a way," he said afterwards. "It's quite amazing because I made a few mistakes and I didn't dare to watch the timing board after my run. I thought I was way back. It's a superb surprise, I'm enjoying a great season so far. I have already won as many races as in the past season and I can still aim to improve my mark. It would be nice to set a new record of victories after reaching the barer of 2000 points last winter.

"It's so quiet and nice here compared to what I faced at St. Anton where life was quite crazy for me. I feel pretty cool and I'm still enjoying what I'm doing. It's fun to compete when you win. And I hope to clinch my third Overall World Cup title tomorrow with another strong performance."

On Thursday afternoon, Hermann was so concerned by his slow training times that he was testing skis until five o'clock. He was lucky that his service rep found a faster pair later on in the evening.

"I guess that the victories you don't expect are the nicest ones," added Maier, who was disappointed not to clinch any titles at St. Anton three weeks ago. In the meantime, he already won a giant slalom in Japan.

He will now try hard to imitate the great Alberto Tomba and win three races in three days. In December 1994, the Italian won two slaloms and one GS in a row before clinching the Overall World Cup title in March 1995 with a total of 11 victories.

In 1979, Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark celebrated a total of 13 victories in slalom and giant slalom. So far Hermann has won an amazing total of 38 World Cup events in four disciplines since February 1997. This season's end promised to be quite exciting thanks to him.

— Patrick Lang, World Cup Correspondent

Email this story to a friend