Radamus and Negomir lead Americans in super-G at FIS World Alpine Ski Championships

For the first time this season, a men’s super-G was not won by Aleksander Aamodt Kilde or Marco Odermatt. Canadian James Crawford pulled off the upset to win Thursday’s world championships super-G in Courchevel, France with a time of 1 minute, 7.22 seconds, 0.01 seconds ahead of Kilde. Alexis Pinturault, who won the Alpine combined on his home mountain on Tuesday, rounded out the podium and Marco Odermatt — winner of four of the six super-Gs on the World Cup circuit and a podium placer in 13 of the last 16 — placed fourth, 0.11 behind the Frenchman.

“I definitely wasn’t expecting anything today,” said Crawford, who has just three podium places in 79 World Cup starts but was also the Olympic combined bronze medalist at the Beijing Olympics last year. “It was consistency from top to bottom. I pushed out of the gate with a very clear mindset on where I wanted to be, what I wanted to ski.”

Kyle Negomir and River Radamus, two SSCV alumni, skied back-to-back in bibs 33 and 34 and wound up placing as the top Americans in the event. Radamus (1:08.52) followed up his fourth-place finish in Tuesday’s combined with a 16th place on Thursday and Negomir (1:08.70) finished in 17th. Ryan Cochran-Siegle, the defending Olympic silver medalist, placed 18th.

Negomir was ranked sixth after the opening sector but became off-balance and had a close call in the middle of the course. The 24-year-old made a nice recovery in his world championships debut, however, regaining his speed and moving up from 21st to 17th in the final interval.

“I am satisfied with the skiing more than the time,” Negomir said. “You had to be really aggressive on this course and in between my mistakes I was happy with my skiing.”

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Radamus struggled to find an aerodynamic posture throughout his run as the course — roughed up for the later starters — stood up the young American at various turns.

“This was definitely more of a speed skiers super-G, but mindset was the same: I am always skiing to win and be on the podium,” Radamus told U.S. Ski and Snowboard’s Sierra Ryder afterward. “I felt like I skied with the right approach and attacked as hard as I could.”

Radamus also plans to compete in the parallel (Feb. 14), the team event (Feb. 15) and the giant slalom (Feb. 17).

Battles between many pre-race favorites ended up not materializing on another beautiful, sunny day on the L’Eclipse course. Flat light made it difficult to locate bumps on the technically demanding route and several turns in the steeper middle section proved to be tricky. Defending champion Vincent Kriechmayr finished more than eight-tenths off the pace and outside the top 10. The Austrian, Odermatt and Kilde are the only skiers to win a super-G on the World Cup circuit in the past two years, but only Kilde ended up snagging a medal, his first career world championship medal.

“It was gold I was keen on, so losing by a hundredth really stings,” Kilde said in a translated quote to VG.

“That’s how the sport is here, that’s why you train to win the decisive hundredths. On Sunday (downhill) it might be my turn.”