If anyone had to beat Aksel Lund Svindal in his final race, he seemed just fine with it being Norwegian teammate Kjetil Jansrud.
After an emotional moment when he leaned back, stretched his arms out and looked to the sky, Svindal was all smiles, despite finishing a close second in the downhill at the world championships on Saturday.
Amid a crowd of thousands of flag-waving Norwegian fans, Svindal playfully pointed at Jansrud after finishing 0.02 seconds behind in a race that was characterized by thick fog and heavy snowfall, which caused an hour’s delay.
Photo: AFP
Jansrud had come down three racers earlier.
“Two-hundredths this way or two-hundredths that way, doesn’t matter. Let’s just enjoy this,” Svindal said. “I was really relaxed, to be honest. It was a great show, a double Norwegian [show].”
Already an Olympic champion in the super-G at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, this is Jansrud’s first world title, adding to his two silvers at the world championships.
A big Liverpool soccer fan, he compared the feeling of skiing into a finish area filled with flag-waving Norwegian spectators to how he envisaged it would be like scoring a goal at Anfield.
“It is one of the biggest come-to-the-finish moments of my career,” Jansrud said. “I got a little taste of how a soccer player feels every weekend.”
Svindal bowed to the roaring crowd during the flower ceremony.
“I’ve been sharing the podium quite a few times with Aksel in my career, so doing this on his last race and [at the] world championships is an honor. So this is a perfect day,” Jansrud said.
Vincent Kriechmayr of Austria came third, 0.33 seconds behind, to add to his silver medal from the super-G event earlier in the week.
Svindal, a two-time Olympic champion and five-time world champion, last month announced that he would retire after this race.
Jansrud was racing with two broken bones in his left hand following a fall in training in Kitzbuehel, Austria, two-and-a-half weeks ago. Doctors had told Jansrud to sit out for six weeks, but he could not pass up the chance of racing at a worlds so close to home.
“They said [the injury] is not going to be good enough for Are,” Jansrud said. “But somehow you get this singular focus to make it happen.”
“This was something that I missed up until now,” Jansrud added about his missed opportunities in previous worlds. “So that makes it bigger.”
While Svindal just missed out on a chance to become the first man to win the downhill world title three times, he still joined Kjetil Andre Aamodt and Marc Girardelli as the only skiers to collect a medal at six different world championships.
“This is more than I expected, to be honest,” Svindal said. “I knew I was fast enough to win or take a medal, but to make it happen on the one day that it counts is something else.”
Four-time NBA all-star DeMarcus Cousins arrived in Taiwan with his family early yesterday to finish his renewed contract with the Taiwan Beer Leopards in the T1 League. Cousins initially played a four-game contract with the Leopards in January. On March 18, the Taoyuan-based team announced that Cousins had renewed his contract. “Hi what’s up Leopard fans, I’m back. I’m excited to be back and can’t wait to join the team,” Cousins said in a video posted on the Leopard’s Facebook page. “Most of all, can’t wait to see you guys, the fans, next weekend. So make sure you come out and support the Beer
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was