Norwegian Henrik Kristoffersen returned from 16th place after the first lap to win the Alpine Slalom World Championship.
According to the International Ski Federation, A.J. Ginnis has won Greece’s first Olympic or World Championship silver medal in any winter Olympic event.
The technically difficult first part of the second round of the two-week world final in Courchevel, France, wreaked havoc.
The 28-year-old Kristofferson pulled it off, winning his second world title and his first as a junior. Kristofferson had 23 World Cup slalom victories, fourth in men’s history, and until Sunday was the only person to win more than 11 World Cup slalom victories without an Olympic or world title. Men’s and women’s champion .
He waited in the leader’s chair for almost half an hour, while the 15 skiers who outstripped him in the first round also left.
“Sitting down and waiting is worse than standing at the start and leading after the first lap,” said 2019 World Giant Slalom Champion Kristofferson, who finished third, third, third, 4th, 4th and 4th. “I have won most of my races in slalom, except for Olympic gold and world championship gold. So I think it’s about time.”
Ginnis, also 28, represented the United States at the 2017 World Championships but dropped out of the national team after the 2017-18 season due to multiple injuries and a World Championship best finish of 26th.
He moved to his native Greece, where he learned to ski on Mount Parnassus, a 2.5 hour drive from Athens. He immigrated to Austria at the age of 12 and to Vermont three years later.
Ginnis, who underwent six knee surgeries and tore his ACL last year, thought he had stopped skiing when he traveled to Beijing to work on the NBC Olympics. This experience ignited the fire.
On February 4, Guinness placed second in the final World Cup slalom event before the World Championships, having never placed in the top ten in a World Cup event before.
“When I came back, I told myself that my goal is to qualify for the next Olympic cycle and be a medal contender,” he said. “Coming back from injury, leaving the team, trying to raise money for what we’re doing now… It’s a dream come true at all levels.”
“It’s all because of them,” he said as he finished second in Sunday’s first round. “They really developed me. I think for me it was like being ready to want to ski for my country, because I grew up there, and then for them I was a real injured athlete. So I don’t blame them for anything. for firing employees when they do so. It makes my life difficult.”
Italy’s Alex Vinatzer took the bronze, securing the title of the world’s most decorated player for the first time in history for Norway.
Austria, which for the first time since 1987 has no gold in the World Championships, missed its last chance: the leader of the first round, Manuel Ferrer, tied for seventh on Sunday.
The Men’s Alpine Skiing World Cup season kicks off next weekend with giant slalom and slalom in Palisades-Tahoe, California.
Mikaela Shiffrin’s next race is the World Cup in Kvitfjell, Norway on the first weekend of March. She is missing one of the 86 World Cup victories of Swede Ingemar Stenmark, the slalom and giant slalom star of the 1970s and 80s.
Olympic bronze medalist in the 400m hurdles Femke Bol broke the world track record for the longest time in track and field by beating a 41-year-old woman’s record in the indoor 400m hurdles on Sunday.
“When I crossed the finish line, I knew the record was mine because of the crowd noise,” she said, according to World Athletics.
She broke the world record of 49.59 set by Yarmila Kratochvilova of Czech Republic in March 1982. This is the world record for the longest duration of any athletics event at the Olympics or World Outdoor or Indoor Championships.
The new longest new world record was Kratochvilova’s 800 m outdoor world record of 1:53.28, set in 1983. Since Kratochvilova set the 800m record, no woman has run 96 percent of it.
The only older world record in all of athletics (not just competitive) is the world record in the 22.50m shot put, set in 1977 by Czech Helena Fibingerova.
Earlier in the indoor season, Ball had the fastest time in the indoor 500 meters (1:05.63), a non-world championship event. She also set the fastest time in history (36.86) in the 300m hurdles, which is not an Olympic or world championship.
Bol is the third fastest woman in history in her main event, the 400m hurdles, behind Americans Sydney McLaughlin-Levron and Delilah Muhammad. At last year’s World Championships, she took silver in a race that McLaughlin-Lefron won with a world record. Ball was 1.59 seconds behind.
49.26 Femke Bol (2023) 49.59 Kratochvilova (1982) 49.68 Nazarova (2004) 49.76 Kocembova (1984)pic.twitter.com/RhuWkuBwcE
Team USA won the mixed acrobatics team competition that opened the Freestyle World Championships, one year after winning gold in the debut Olympic event.
Ashley Caldwell, Chris Lillis and Quinn Delinger teamed up to win Georgia (country, not state) with 331.37 on Sunday. They lead the Chinese team with 10.66 points. Ukraine won the bronze medal.
“These events are of great concern because we are so close to the mountains,” Lilis said. “I feel like every jump I make is for my two teammates.”
Last year, Caldwell, Lillis and Justin Schoenefeld won their first Olympic tag team title in acrobatics, marking the first time the U.S. had stepped onto the Olympic acrobatic podium since 2010, and also won the women’s and men’s titles after Nikki Stone and Eric Bergust in 1998. The first gold medal in history. Later at the 2022 Olympics, Meghannik won the bronze medal in the women’s event.
Caldwell said she rarely attends the World Championships to spend time with her family while Lilith builds up their collection of world medals. Caldwell won an individual gold medal in 2017 and a silver medal in 2021. Lilith won the silver medal in 2021.
China has not returned a single medalist from last year’s Olympics. The best aerial gymnast of Ukraine Oleksandr Abramenko was out of action due to a knee injury.
Post time: Feb-20-2023
