Slalom at Val d’Isère: Linus Streiser misses the second half and Clement Noel leads

France’s Clement Noel beat Sweden’s Christopher Jacobsen (+1.40 seconds) and Croatia’s Philip Zubic (+1.85). Rauchfuß (+3.24) was 24 years old.

“Linus has been a disappointment,” ARD expert Felix Neuwerther said. “It wasn’t easy, it was more of a struggle than good skating,” said Straßer, who recently weakened with a digestive disease.

Only nine hundredths of a second were missing from the final, in which Rauchfuss was the only German. Mendelheimer, who was already 22nd in the giant slalom, said there was not a “little lack of conviction”. “Two points in Val d’Isere, I’m really happy with that,” Rauchfuss said.

Alexander Schmid, still going strong in sixth in the giant slalom, Anton Tremmel and Julian Himmelsbach were eliminated in the first round.

Straßer struggles with conditions

The surface was “very different,” Strasser said: “Partially completely icy, very smooth. Then you have places where the slope completely melts. It was very difficult to work with.” To make matters worse, the later starters had better conditions.

“Of course it was a mess, we don’t need to talk about it,” Neureuther told his former roommate. “The more I tried to speed up, the more mistakes happened.” Straßer had “huge bucks”, which Neureuther also attributed to the material, which is supposedly “hard-tuned”.

When the two discussed live on TV, Germany’s top slalom driver thought he was still in second place in the first race of the Olympic season. Neureuther also said, “Just like Linus can skate, it doesn’t matter if he’s a second or two behind – he can still get ahead.” But nothing came of it.