KVITFJELL, Norway — Canada's Jack Crawford raced to silver in a World Cup super-G on Sunday, on the heels of his bronze-medal performance at the Beijing Olympics.
The 24-year-old from Toronto, who was third in Alpine combined last month in Beijing, lost to Aleksander Aamodt Kilde by just 0.07 seconds on the Norwegian's home course.
"Over the year, I just started building more and more confidence realizing that being able to contend with the best in the world is actually a reality," Crawford said in a conference call. "And I think once you realize that it doesn't take much more than what you are capable of it's really easy to bring it on a daily basis."
Kilde, the Olympic bronze medallist, mastered a downhill-like, fast course set on the Oympiabakken hill in sunny conditions. Olympic super-G champion Matthias Mayer of Austria was 0.12 behind in third.
“To win on home soil, together with the Norwegian crowd, beautiful weather, great conditions, it couldn't be better,” Kilde said.
Crawford had a breakout performance at the Beijing Games, missing the podium in the men's downhill by less than a tenth of a second. He was sixth in the super-G.
"Something has clicked," said Crawford of the strong results he's shown recently. "I can't quite put my finger on it. It might be the approach I bring to my races, it might be a technical thing, a tactical thing, but when you get to this level it's such a minute difference that gets you to the top and saves those extra tenths every section that it's really hard to pinpoint what actually does it."
Sunday was Kilde’s 13th career win, all in the speed events of downhill and super-G. But it was only his first World Cup win in 18 starts at the Alpine skiing venue of the 1994 Winter Games.
Kilde’s main rival for the super-G title, Marco Odermatt, trailed by 61 points going into the race. But the Swiss skier, whose strongest event is the giant slalom, struggled throughout on the course set by the coach of the Swiss speed team, Manfred Widauer.
Odermatt finished 1.68 behind in 28th and scored just three points. As a result, he dropped to third in the discipline standings, behind Mayer, and neither can now overtake Kilde at the season-ending race in Courchevel on March 17.
Odermatt has gained only 39 points across the three races in Norway this weekend but remains a strong favorite for the World Cup overall title. He still leads runner-up Kilde, the 2019-20 champion, by 189 points with five technical and two speed races remaining.
Kilde was last crowned as the season’s best super-G racer in 2016, making him the seventh male skier to win the prize at least twice.
Two Norwegians achieved the feat earlier: Aksel Lund Svindal, who won it a record five times, and Kjetil Jansrud, who retired after Saturday’s downhill and has three super-G globes.
Dominik Paris finished 0.21 behind in fourth, a day after the Italian won the downhill on the same hill, and Olympic downhill champion Beat Feuz trailed by 0.31 in fifth. The rest of the field was more than seven-tenths of a second off the pace.
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-- With files from The Associated Press.
The Associated Press
