Val Gardena, skips second round of downhill race

The mountains of Val Gardena woke up under the grip of rain and snow, conditions that made it impossible to hold the second timed test of the men’s World Cup downhill. The organizers, faced with an impassable course and the’impossibility of guaranteeing the safety of the athletes in time, had no choice but to cancel the planned test, postponing the appointment with speed directly to the official races.

The long Garda weekend was thus reduced to a single day of testing, the one carried out on Tuesday, December 16. Even then, however, conditions had not been ideal: a snowfall had accompanied the athletes along the track, reducing visibility and complicating line reading. Nevertheless, Marco Odermatt had managed to record the best time, ahead of Daniel Hemetsberger and Italy’s Dominik Paris, who was able to confirm his solidity precisely on the Saslong.

The weather forecast indicates an improvement in the coming hours, but the threshold of attention is still high. The schedule, rescheduled after the cancellation of a downhill not held due to bad weather at Beaver Creek, calls for Thursday, Dec. 18, the latter to be made up, Friday the super-giant and Saturday the second downhill, the one originally scheduled on the calendar.

The hope is that the Saslong will be the first downhill to be held.

The hope of fans and industry insiders is that the weather will be clement and allow the speed protagonists to make their mark on the snows of Val Gardena.