River Radamus leads U.S. Ski Team with 12th-place GS finish under the lights in Schladming
Marco Trovati/AP photo
Ties don’t happen very often in ski racing. Stopping the clock at the same time as another athlete in both the first and second runs is even more rare.
But that’s exactly what happened to River Radamus Tuesday in Schladming, Austria. Radamus led the U.S. Ski Team with a 12th-place finish in the World Cup giant slalom, tying Lucas Pinheiro Braathen on both attempts of the shortened Planai course. After a rough last month, the Edwards skier told U.S. Ski and Snowboard’s Sierra Ryder Tuesday’s race was just what he needed.
“It’s been a difficult January for me; I haven’t been skiing the way I want to,” said Radamus, who was 34th in the Kitzbuehel super-G last week and didn’t qualify for a second run in the Wengen slalom on Jan. 19. Other than the 10th-place finish in Adelboden on Jan. 12, he hasn’t been in the top-10 since his seventh and eight-place finishes at Beaver Creek in early December.
“So, the second run was definitely a step in the right direction,” the 26-year-old continued. “And you know, (I) was in the hunt of this race. But, really tight race and I needed more from the first run to be able to compete with the top guys.”
Heavy rains and snow forced organizers to shorten the course by 15 gates. Alexander Steen Olsen told FIS after the first run that the unpleasant conditions reminded him of his home country. The Norwegian took advantage, claiming his second win of the season — and third of his career — as his teammate Henrik Kristoffersen finished in second.
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“It was either I can do it or it will not be my day,” Steen Olsen told FIS regarding his mindset prior to the final run. At the halfway point, the 23-year-old trailed first-run leader Loic Meillard of Switzerland by 0.11 seconds. With fog covering the top of the run, skiers were hard pressed to move up much. Some — like Steen Olsen and Radamus — defied the odds.
“I just accepted that and really focused on skiing the tracks and not caring about the gates so much, because it’s easy to lean into the gates and the tracks are far away and you don’t get pressure on the skis,” Steen Olsen said.
“It was dumping rain during the warm-up, about as hard as I’ve ever skied in,” added Radamus. “We got the word that it was going to be a lowered start, so we knew it was going to be a tight race from the jump. No time to warm-up or get into it — you have to go full-on from the start.”
Radamus called his first run “a little bit too safe.”
“It cost me a lot,” the 26-year-old stated. “So, second run, I knew I had to go with the approach of going for broke, pinning it as hard I could.”
The former three-time Youth Olympic Games gold medalist blasted the final sector faster than all but two skiers, moving up five places — along with Pinheiro Braathen, the Norwegian-born Brazilian skier who claimed Brazil’s first World Cup podium in Beaver Creek in December.
“I thought I skied a lot better,” Radamus said. Marco Odermatt rounded out the podium in third, knocking his teammate, Meillard, off the medal stand by 0.01 seconds.
“I was probably the luckiest guy of the day,” Odermatt told FIS. “The conditions have been very difficult, obviously. We are not used to skiing in the rain and the slope was tough to ski. You had to change your setup and also your mindset a little bit. I didn’t do well in the first run; better in the second run, but also not perfect.”
Radamus now sits 14th in the giant slalom season standings. With the men’s World Cup traveling to Garmisch, Germany, for a downhill on Feb. 2, the next shot at his specialty event will be at the FIS Alpine Ski World Championships in Saalbach on Feb. 14. Radamus was 11th in Cortina d’Ampezzo in the 2021 worlds and 12th in Courchevel in 2023. He also placed fourth in the Alpine Combined event and was part of the gold-medal winning team parallel squad. Looking ahead to his fourth global championship (counting the 2022 Olympics), Radamus said Tuesday’s skiing bolstered his confidence.
“I’m very excited to take on world champs,” he said. “I’ve got a little bit of time to prepare. I feel like the skiing’s coming. Hopefully, I’ll be peaking right at the right time and be able to challenge for medals when the big show comes.”
