23 JAN 2001 > Night Slalom
Hat Trick for "Big Ben" Raich
Race Results

Two years after his first career success on the demanding Planai course at Schladming, Austria's Benjamin Raich achieved another impressive performance by winning his third consecutive slalom this season in front of a huge crowd of 40,000.

"I was quite afraid but I did not gave up and kept on fighting as hard as I could," Raich said after the race. "I felt very confident after my two previous wins and I thought I still could make it. The crowd supported me well; it's such a great feeling to win in front of so many people. I'm happy that the coming World Championships will take place in Austria, not far from my home town. It will be a big party for all of us."

Raich beat by half a second Norway's Hans Petter Buraas, the only non-Austrian winner in slalom this winter, while Slovenia's Mitja Kunc was 3rd at 87/100 of a second. Two other Austrians, Kilian Albrecht and Heinz Schilchegger, came in 4th and 5th place and didn't complain too much about missing the podium as they gained the necessary qualification points for the coming World Championships at St Anton.

"I knew I would come back. It was just a matter of time and patience...."

Their colleague Mario Matt, last year's winner at Schladming, should be joining them at the Tyrolian ski resort despite his failure to finish the first run here tonight. He won a race earlier this season at Madonna di Campiglio and twice reached the podium in other slaloms.

Vail, Colorado's Sacha Gros should also have qualified for St Anton with his 20th place — his best result in a long time. US teammate Erik Schlopy reached a top position but was disqualified for having straddled a gate in the second run.

Again among the elite, Scotland's Alain Baxter, 9th in front of Japan's Kentaro Minagawa. Alain has scored points in all six slaloms this season which should soon allow him to enter the first seed in this event.

Along with Wengen and Kitzbuhel, the night slalom at Schladming has become the third major event in the specialty and it's the first time that the same skier had a chance to win all three races in the same season. Raich, who now deserves the nickname "Big Ben," showed great determination and incredible coolness in reaching this third win after making a major mistake at the beginning of the second run.

Raich, the fastest in the first leg, almost crashed out at the beginning of the second run set on the final part of the treacherous "Planai" course made famous in the World Cup circuit by the first success of "Kaiser" Franz Klammer in a downhill in 1973.

This is Raich's eighth World Cup win since January 1999 and a gold medal is now his next goal. This is quite an incredible improvement for this athlete who skied out in the first four gate events of the season. It wasn't until the slalom at Madonna di Campiglio in mid-December that he reached a good result (5th) and it was early January when he got back on the podium at Les Arcs where he was 2nd in GS behind Michael von Gruenigen.

Raich deserves great credit for not giving up hope that he would find his way back to the top while his colleagues were accumulating victories in all events. "I knew I would come back," he said. "It was just a matter of time and patience."

Raich's big luck tonight came when his closest rival from the first run, Heinz Schilchegger, who lost only 62/100 of a second earlier in the night, did not ski to his potentialin order to save his spot on the team for St Anton. Others like Buraas or Albrecht had lost too much time in the first run, but both will be harder to beat in three weeks at St Anton.

The next men's events are planned for the weekend at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, south of Munich, Germany. A downhill and a super G are on the schedule. Raining there earlier this week, a women's GS at Ofterschwang was cancelled on Friday, thought he slalom is still on.

— Patrick Lang, World Cup Correspondent

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