Cuche Sets New Record with 4th Hahnenkamm Win

January 25th, 2011

Source – PlanetSki

The Swiss racer, Didier Cuche, won the Hahnenkamm race in style on Saturday. He has now won it four times, the first in 1998 and then, after a 10 year gap, again in 2008 and 2010. He is also the oldest man to win a World Cup race. The event was overshadowed by a serious accident during training on Thursday.

He has equalled the number of Hahnenkamm wins by the Austrian legend, Franz Klammer.

The Hahnenkamm is known as the season’s blue ribban event and the winner reigns over the rest of the field until the World Cup finals.

At 36 years and five months, Cuche is older than Liehctenstein’s Marco Buechel, who won a Super-G, also in Kitzbuehel, at 36 and two months in 2008.

The Swiss team was desperate to take the race win after the Austrian’s stole the show in Wegen last weekend at the Lauberhorn races.

This weekend it was the Swiss turn to claim gold and victory over their next door neighbours and arch rivals.

The Swiss have now won it for the past four years; three of the victories are Cuche’s. The other, in 2009, was from Didier Defago.

Didier Cuche skied a storming run to take the top spot, leaving his closest rival almost a second adrift despite almost losing his pole early on.

The American racer, Bode Miller, finished in second with France’s Adrien Theaux in third.

Bode Miller, back in shape with the world championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen approaching fast, equalled his best result in Kitzbuhel by finishing second, 0.98 seconds behind Cuche.

Miller has never won the most famous ski race of them all, but he was very gracious in defeat.

“There was just no beating Didier today. I’m 0.98 seconds behind so there’s no regrets,” said Miller.

“I was happy with the amount of risk I took and the way that I skied. You take your hat off when you know you skied a great race and another person took more risk and executed better.”

The victory margin of almost a second is emphatic and the equivalent to almost 30m. A country mile by downhill ski racing standards.

It was a stunning victory.