Nick Wright previews this weekend's clash between York City Knights and Hull FC
Alex Reid looks at whether the once ever-present appearance of English clubs in the later stages of the Champions League is set to become a thing of the past
Craig Dobson looks at QPR's decision to sack Neil Warnock and replace him with Mark Hughes
James Tompkinson reviews an excellent pre-season victory for the York City Knights against Yorkshire rivals Leeds Rhinos
The Hahnenkamm downhill race, on the difficult Streif course, is considered the most dangerous downhill race on the world cup calendar, with this year’s course being unusually bumpy. The unique attraction of the Streif is the series of large jumps and difficult compressions. These are immediately followed by tight corners, meaning the jumps have to be landed perfectly or else the skier ends up in the safety fencing.
Cuche managed to win the notoriously dangerous race by a massive margin of 0.98 seconds, with American Bode Miller and Frenchman Adrien Theaux finishing second and third respectively. World cup downhill standings leader Michael Walchhofer failed to finish following a crash, which means that Cuche’s first place finish saw him climb to first place in the world cup standings. The win also saw Cuche equal Franz Klammer and Karl Schranz's record on the Streif, with all three skiers now having recorded four wins in the race.
Cuche winning in Austria is a sweet justice for the Swiss, after Austrian Klaus Kroell won the equally famous Lauberhorn downhill race in Wengen, Switzerland a week earlier.
The Lauberhorn race is famous as the fastest and longest downhill race on the world cup calendar; skier’s speeds approach 100 mph during the Hanneggschuss, the fastest part of the course. The winner however is not decided by top speed - more important is the skier who can take fastest route through the bottleneck Kernen-S corners, as it is hugely difficult to pick up speed afterwards.
A record crowd of 35,000 watched Kroell master the course to finish first, 0.14 seconds ahead of Cuche, and 0.39 seconds ahead of last year’s winner Carlo Janka. Cuche was unlucky to catch an edge just after the Wasserstation, which caused him to lose time. Whether this affected the overall result is open to debate.
The world cup downhill season is over halfway through with 5 out of 9 races completed. Didier Cuche leads the standings with 279 points but Switzerland’s Silvan Zurbriggen and Austria’s Klaus Kroell are not far behind on 270 and 269 points respectively. This leaves the second half of the season set up nicely, with all to play for.
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