First combined win for Benjamin Raich

Wengen, Jan. 14th - Austria's Benjamin Raich celebrated his first win in a World Cup combined today in Wengen when he clinched the newly created “Super-combined” raced separately from the other competitions. It's his 15th World Cup win in his career.

He won the slalom run in the morning and skied the downhill fast enough in the afternoon to stay out of reach of Norway's Lasse Kjus and Switzerland's Didier Defago. Raich moved to within 198 points of Overall World Cup leader Bode Miller, who straddled a gate in the slalom portion of this new event.

The 26-year-old technical specialist, who only began competing seriously in speed events last year, is back in the race for the Overall title now considering his very consistent form in slalom and giant slalom.

The 30th competitors on the downhill, Raich ruined the birthday celebrations of 34-year-old Norwegian Lasse Kjus who had to settle for second place with a delay of 32/100 of a second. Home favorites Didier Defago and Daniel Albrecht took third and fourth place respectively. Their team-mate Silvan Zurbriggen, also an excellent slalom and downhill skier, was only 22nd after making too many mistakes in the slalom run. Norway's Kjetil Aamodt was a strong 5th while Hermann Maier came in 9th.

Raich's fighting for more

Raich, who has already won three slalom races in Wengen, was very happy to put his name of the winner of the prestigious Lauberhorn combined.
“I'm really pleased to win a combined, it means a lot,” he said. “I've been training a lot in downhill in past years and it has been one of my goals to win a combined. It was a very difficult slalom but the downhill was very good for me. I had a lot of fun and that's important.”
“I'm really not thinking about the Overall title at the moment,” Raich added. “If I would, it could actually hinder my performances. I'm skiing pretty consistently right now, so I'm just going to concentrate on Sunday's slalom race and skip the downhill Saturday.”

Raich led after the slalom leg, which caused problems for several of the big-name skiers including American Miller, who was disqualified after straddling a gate, ruling him out of the downhill run.

Miller was slow

“It wasn't a good run, I didn't ski fast at all but I didn't know that I'd straddled the gate until I got to the bottom and saw the star next to my name,” Miller said. “It's very frustrating.”

Kjus was in sixth position following the slalom, but produced the third fastest downhill of the day to make the podium. He won the Lauberhorn combined raced over two days in 1999. “I'm happy with the result, and I was lucky that some of the good guys skied out,” Kjus said. “My slalom run was poor. I was trying to go faster but I made some mistakes. The downhill was better though. It was good to see that I'm skiing faster in downhill than last month. I took my skis from last year and it made a big difference. I'm optimistic for Saturday.”

The new format of the World Cup combined is intended to raise the profile of the combined discipline and give downhill specialists a fairer chance of overall victory. “It makes it more spectacular for the crowd and for us, even though it's a lot harder for us slalom specialists to have just the one run,” said Raich.

Three more “Super-combined” are scheduled in the World Cup schedule next winter. At the coming Worlds in Bormio, the combined will be race in three runs - first the downhill, then two slalom runs. In the last run, the top-30 of the intermediate standings will compete in reverse order, the leader starting in 30th position.

Following the race, Miller confirmed his form ahead of Saturday's famous Lauberhorn downhill by posting the fastest time in a mini-training session opened to all skiers who were not involved in the combined downhill. Miller clocked the sixth fastest time of the day.

Patrick Lang