The FIS officials and the head of the Gardena Organizing Committee were extremely relieved at the Team Captain Meeting this evening. The reason for this relief: The first training run for the race on Saturday was completed at 3 pm after more than four hours. A fully completed training run is required to be able to hold a World Cup Downhill. Because the weather conditions are far from stable, the training could be affected negatively by the weather and the wind. But for the race on Saturday this is not a problem anymore.

Today’s training was anything but easy to handle. After everything up until bib number 46 had proceeded relatively smoothly, the difficulties started. First of all, thick fog spread across the piste, then a strong wind arose in the uppermost part of the course. Race Director Rainer Senoner specifically thanked FIS Race Director Günter Hujara for his successful “management of the crisis”. Senoner: “Hujara was able to find the right words at the right moment today. It wasn’t easy to let all racers start, but in the end everything went well.” It certainly wasn’t easy, especially the training run was a tough task that lasted four hours. The last three racers were particularly affected. Hujara pointed this out again this evening: “We did well to start the training as early as possible. I especially thank the athletes who had to descend last and had to wait a long time.” These three skiers were not able to do a training run anymore, but slid down the upper part of the course and completed the training from the Super G start in race time.

There is now no pressure anymore to let all racers start in the training run on Thursday. Even the weather forecast promises better conditions for tomorrow and last but not least, Eurosport will be broadcasting the training run live. The niche sports channel will switch to Val Gardena at 12.10 and will continue broadcasting for an hour and 15 minutes.