LAKE LOUISE, Alberta (Reuters) – Austrian double Olympic gold medalist Matthias Mayer won the opening downhill race of the men’s World Cup season in Lake Louise, Alberta, on Saturday ahead of compatriot Vincent Kriechmayr and Switzerland’s Beat Feuz.
Mayer, competing a day after the first downhill race of the week was canceled due to too much snow at the Canadian ski resort west of Calgary, posted a time of one minute 47.74 seconds to secure his 11th World Cup win.
Kriechmayr, who started first among the 65 competitors, was 0.23 seconds back of Mayer, while Feuz, the four-time reigning downhill Crystal Globe winner, was 0.35 seconds adrift in third.
With his win, the 31-year-old Mayer has now finished on the podium in each of his last six World Cup downhill appearances, a run that began with his triumph in Bormio last December.
Mayer is the first Austrian man to claim six successive top-three finishes in World Cup downhill races since Stephan Eberharter, who set a run of eight, in 2003-2004.
(Reporting by Steve Keating; Writing by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Paul Simao)
