Bormio, Italy – The second longest downhill on the Audi FIS Alpine World Cup tour, the Stelvio is known for its leg punishing ice and bumps while racers hit speeds of 75 mph. It was the tightest race on Saturday since 1992 with the top four separated by a mere .02 seconds. Austrian Hannes Reichelt and Italian Dominik Paris tied for the win, .01 in front of World Cup downhill and overall leader Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway. In fourth place, only 0.01 second off the podium, was Klaus Kroell of Austria.

It was the second podium finish and first World Cup victory for Paris, who finished eighth in the Lake Louise downhill and fifth in Beaver Creek. After finishing among the top three in both training runs in Bormio, he was confident to go all in on race day.

“It’s amazing, it was my dream to win a downhill in the World Cup – and now I finally won it… its amazing!” said an excited Paris. “Tying with Reichelt doesn’t make any difference – I am only happy to be on top.”

Travis Ganong, of Squaw Valley, Calif., delivered a gutsy run to finish a career best seventh, a mere 0.49 seconds from the win after skiing from bib 25. The punishing Stelvio downhill bucked 11 of the 55 starters off course, including Tommy Biesemeyer, of Keene, N.Y. Steven Nyman, of Heber, Utah, finished 26^th and Lake Placid, N.Y.’s Andrew Weibrecht 33^rd. American star Bode Miller continues to rehabilitate following knee surgery.

“You have to be gutsy on this course. It’s such a challenging hill. It never lets up,” Ganong explained. “There are so many key turns, terrain and jumps that you have to nail. It’s bumpy and dark and it’s inevitable that you’ll have a mistake, but whoever can push through that, will be fast.

“Finally I’m figuring out how to mentally attack these downhills. Before I was always kind of nervous because it was my first or second time skiing these courses,” added Ganong. “But this is my third year in Bormio and I feel like I can just relax a little bit and have fun. I love to ski and in the last few years I had to tone back how I ski because you have to really learn these downhills before you can attack. Now I feel that I know them, I can attack and I can be up there with the best guys.”

Young gun Ben Thomsen, of Invermere, British Columbia, Canada, led a trio of Canucks to top-20 finishes. Thomsen and veterans Jan Hudec and Manuel Osborne-Paradis finished 15^th, 17^th and 18^th, respectively.

“It went really well but I made a couple of mistakes that were really costly,” said Thomsen, who clocked a time of one minute, 59.87 seconds. “Things are going in the right direction. I’m excited to get home and take a break and then see how I do in Kitzbühel (Austria) and Wengen (Switzerland).”

OFFICIAL RESULTS
Audi FIS Alpine World Cup
Bormio, Italy – Dec. 29, 2012
Men’s Downhill