Swiss skier Monney edges out world champion Von Allmen in downhill of team combined at worlds

By Canadian Press on February 12, 2025.

SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM, Austria (AP) — Swiss skier Alexis Monney posted the fastest time in the downhill portion of the new team combined event at the Alpine skiing world championships on Wednesday.

His teammate Tanguy Nef will start the slalom portion later Wednesday with a slim advantage of 0.02 seconds over another Swiss team, where world champion Franjo von Allmen ran the downhill and Loic Meillard was scheduled to race the slalom.

Switzerland has won both men’s speed events at these worlds and took silver in the parallel team event last week.

Italy 1, with downhiller Dominik Paris and slalom racer Alex Vinatzer, was 0.46 seconds behind in third.

Paris was fourth in Sunday’s downhill, while Vinatzer secured gold for Italy in the parallel race with a strong last run in the final against Switzerland.

On Wednesday, no other team finished within nine-tenths of a second off the lead.

Norway’s Fredrik Moeller trailed by only 0.73 near the end of his run but fell and slid off the course on his hip after landing a jump.

Monney won bronze in Sunday’s downhill but this time edged out Von Allmen.

“I really had fun on the slope. Everything went well,” Monney said.

After early rain, the race was delayed for about 15 minutes twice as low clouds moved over the upper part of the course and reduced visibility for the racers.

“I pretty like bad light, maybe weird, but I like it,” Monney said.

Von Allmen struggled early in his run when he came off the race line and skied into the soft snow outside the blue lines. He just managed to make the next gate and then made up almost all of the time he lost there.

“That can happen, I tried to make the best out of it,” said Von Allmen, adding he had “a bit more space in his helmet” as he and the entire Swiss downhill team shaved hair off their heads after its successes in Sunday’s downhill.

Their standout racer, Marco Odermatt, skipped the team combined, opting to train for the giant slalom on Friday. Odermatt is the super-G world champion who tops the World Cup downhill standings.

The leader of the slalom standings, Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway, also sat out the event where one racer competes in a downhill run and another in a slalom run, with their times added together to determine the final results. Each nation can enter up to four pairings.

The new event will make its debut at next year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics and was first held at elite level on Tuesday, when Mikaela Shiffrin and Breezy Johnson won the women’s event.

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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing

The Associated Press