SKI CROSS. The season's second Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup event and the third competition (ladies / men respectively) in St Johann / Oberndorf (AUT) was held on Saturday night as a night race under the floodlights. The challenging piste was made even more testing on the athletes through the continous snowfall.

The men's final was claimed by Switzerland's Alex Fiva who beat the Canadian Brady Leman on the finish line. The 25-year-old Canadian made his return to competitive racing last month after breaking his leg three times. “He’s got longer arms than I have,” joked Leman after he and Fiva crossed the line shoulder to shoulder in a photo finish. “Second is cool and everything, but you want to win. “Having the red bib again is sweet – it was cool to have it after the first race. I like this thing so I want to hold on to it."

Leman leads the overall ski cross World Cup standings with 184 points, just two points ahead of Fiva.

“It was rough racing out there,” said Brady, who was second in his first heat Saturday and went on to win his quarter-final and semifinal. “Conditions were tough and I knew it was going to be a battle out there. I got kind of lucky in the first (heat). My first start was just tragic but I nailed the next two. It was a great race.”

Germany’s Daniel Bohnacker was third in Saturday’s men’s final, while Austria’s Patrick Koller finished fourth. Koller had crashed in the finish of the semi-final in an incident together with the Canadian Christopher Delbosco and did not start in the final due to a potential concussion.

There was plenty of drama on the women’s side, too. French veteran Ophelie David won the women’s final Saturday, with Germany’s Anna Woerner second and Alizee Baron, of France, third. World champion and World Cup leader Kelsey Serwa was eliminated in her quarter-final heat when she got tangled up with another racer and hit the deck. She got back up but didn’t make it through to the semifinals and finished 10th.  Serwa however held on to the red bib as the overall World Cup leader with 226 points, ahead of Sanna Luedi, of Switzerland (189).

Next up for Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup team are the races in Alpe d’Huez, France, on Jan. 11.

FISfreestyle.com
Sunday 8 January 2012

  Tweet