French skier Alexis Pinturault airlifted from course after super-G crash
French ski star Alexis Pinturault crashed in a World Cup super-G race Friday and was airlifted from the course, six days after he became a father for the first time.
Pinturault, the overall World Cup champion in 2021 and a three-time Olympic medalist, crashing on landing the Silberhorn jump approaching the final section of the storied Lauberhorn course at Wengen.
He sat back on his skis before hitting the snow. His skis detached as he tumbled down the mountain, sliding about 50 meters before coming to a stop.
Race workers put a warming cover on Pinturault as they waited for a helicopter to land by the course and take him to a hospital. The race was delayed for about 25 minutes. It was won by Cyprien Sarrazin, who raced minutes before his French teammate Pinturault.
“We know that he was conscious and that’s the most important,” Sarrazin told Swiss broadcaster RTS.
The 32-year-old Pinturault and his wife Romane welcomed their daughter, Olympe, last Saturday in the Swiss capital Bern. That day he had been due to race in giant slalom at nearby Adelboden.
Romane Pinturault travels with her husband as part of his entourage handling media relations.
Pinturault returned to racing Thursday with a career-best downhill result of ninth at Wengen. He has rarely raced the marquee speed discipline in his long career but now focuses on it and no longer races slalom.
Pinturault’s 34 career World Cup race wins include one in super-G. He also took bronze in super-G last year at the world championships held in his home town Courchevel.
Another Frenchman, Matthieu Bailet, crashed into a course-side fence within sight of the finish line. Bailet soon got up and seemed unhurt.
Emerging star Cyprien Sarrazin raced to a winning run, ending a remarkable streak in World Cup superG races. Just three men – Marco Odermatt, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde and Vincent Kriechmayr – had combined to win all 20 races since December 2020.
Odermatt was second Friday, 0.58 seconds behind Sarrazin, and Kilde was exactly one second back in third.
The same three men were on the downhill podium Thursday, when Odermatt earned his first World Cup win in the discipline.
Odermatt extended his lead in the overall World Cup standings in search of a third straight title since Pinturault won in 2021.
The Swiss star also has a bigger lead in the season-long super-G standings, ahead of Kriechmayr who placed outside the top 10 in the race.
The classic Lauberhorn downhill in Wengen – a signature race on the World Cup circuit – will be held Saturday over the full 4.4km (2¾-mile) distance that takes close to 2½ minutes to complete.
It will be a bigger endurance test than usual when the speed racers compete for a third straight day.