River Radamus finishes World Cup season with 17th-place finish in Saalbach, Austria
The Edwards skier finished a career-best 11th in the GS season standings
Marco Trovati/AP photo
Ski and Snowboard Club Vail alumnus River Radamus finished his World Cup season with a 17th-place finish at the World Cup Finals in Saalbach, Austria on Saturday.
Radamus had the 15th-fastest times in both the first and second runs on the Schneekristall/Zw枚lfer course, posting a two-run time of 2 minutes, 38.55 seconds to finish as the top American. The 26-year-old finished the year 11th in the GS standings and 30th in the overall, both career bests.
“It’s been a great season. I feel like I’ve made some strides towards where I want to be in my GS skiing,” the Edwards skier said. “Disappointed with how it ended. Two bad runs here. Wish I could have finished it on a stronger note, but I guess I’ll take the motivation and frustration I have today into the offseason (and) make sure I get better for next year.”
Loic Meillard of Switzerland (2:36.27) took the win and Joan Verdu (2:36:98) and Thomas Tumler (2:37.06) rounded out the podium.
Marco Odermatt, who won the first nine giant slaloms of the World Cup season, had the fastest first run of the day, but did not finish his second run.
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“Happy about the last nine races, obviously not today, but that’s sport,” the Swiss star said. “I knew I had to push because Loic for sure skied very well 鈥� he deserved the victory. I saw Tommy on the third place, so even if it’s not for me today, it’s still a Swiss day.”
World Junior GS champion Ryder Sarchett made his World Cup debut for the U.S. The University of Colorado 20-year-old was last after the first run 鈥� 1.65 seconds from the next skier 鈥� but came back to post the third-fastest second run of the day.
“It’s definitely the next level,” Sarchett said regarding his first experience competing against the best Alpine skiers on the globe.
“You have to be on your best and I think that’s something that’s really cool and hopefully will motivate me for the offseason. I’m excited just to be a part of it.”
“I think he did great. Obviously, first run on a World Cup for almost everybody is a little bit of a wake up call,” Radamus said of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation alumnus.
“I think he sort of was caught aback by how taxing it is, how demanding it is and how high the level is, but he took that in stride, turned around and put together a really, really great second run.”
Radamus said he hasn’t trained with Sarchett very much until this week.
“You can see the speed that he has,” Radamus said. “You can see that he’s really talented and that he’s not afraid of the challenge.” Both Radamus and Sarchett plan to compete at U.S. Nationals next week in Sun Valley.
Sarchett said while he was “disappointed” with his first run, he was glad to leave on a positive note.
“I didn’t ski like myself and I feel like I left a lot on the table,” he said. “I’m happy I battled through to have a second run and I mean that was really fun. It was like normal skiing for me and it was fast and that feels good, so I guess I can just take that away.”
