ST. MORITZ, Switzerland — France edged Slovakia by just eight-hundredths of a second to win the team event at the World Ski Championships on Tuesday.
The final finished level at 2-2 after Alexis Pinturault and Mathieu Faivre won their races for the French, and Veronika Velez Zuzulova and Petra Vlhova for the Slovaks. The tie breaking time went in favor of France, handing them a first medal of the championships.
“We didn’t expect it but we were ready to fight really hard until the end,” said Tessa Worley, the only member of the France team who also won team gold at the Garmisch worlds in 2011. “It was a long shot, for sure. There are so many runs to do. It was really, really tight! We’re really happy we’ve won gold and we’ll celebrate it with the whole team.”
Sweden took bronze after posting a 3-1 victory over a Switzerland team featuring two individual gold medal winners in Wendy Holdener and Luca Aerni. Double defending champions Austria saw their hopes of a third successive gold go up in smoke with a 4-1 defeat by Sweden in the quarterfinals.
Marcel Hirscher, chasing a sixth consecutive overall World Cup title, had a shocker of an afternoon, losing both his races. First he was subject of a massive upset when edged by Dries van den Broecke in Austria’s 3-1 opening win over Belgium, before losing to Sweden’s Andre Myhrer.
First introduced into the world champs in 2005, the team event will next year be included on the program of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
The telegenic event has caught the public’s imagination, with skiers racing down a slalom slope side-by-side to offer a different take on the very individualistic sport of alpine skiing.
Lara Gut to undergo surgery in coming days
Switzerland’s Lara Gut is to undergo surgery on her left knee in the coming days, the Swiss team announced Tuesday. Gut, who won bronze in the super-G and was considered a top Swiss medal hope at the World Ski Championships in St Moritz, was airlifted to hospital after rupturing the anterior cruciate ligament and tearing the meniscus of her left knee during the warm-up for the slalom run of Friday’s alpine combined event.
The Swiss team said she will undergo an operation when the swollen state of her knee allows, with a decision on her return to the slopes dependent on her recovery. In Gut’s absence, the Swiss team have rallied to top the medals table with six, including three golds for Luca Aerni (men’s combined), Beat Feuz (downhill) and Wendy Holdener (women’s combined).
