By Shadia Nasralla
YANQING, China (Reuters) – Austria looks well-placed to defend its Olympic gold in the men’s combined skiing competition on Thursday, but France’s Alexis Pinturault, 2019 combined World Champion and an Olympic silver medallist, will be hot on their heels.
Having already bagged three Alpine medals in Beijing, Austria will be represented by reigning combined World Champion and specialist on technical courses Marco Schwarz and Johannes Strolz, who recently came first in a World Cup slalom event.
They will be joined by Olympic rookie Raphael Haaser.
Frenchman Pinturault will be aiming to outperform his silver medal-winning performances at the 2018 Games and the 2021 World Championship. He came seventh in a training run on Wednesday.
Another medal contender is Loic Meillard of Switzerland, who won bronze in the 2021 combined World Championship.
The Alpine combined discipline is designed to test the entrants’ all-round capacity for speed and technical racing, with the entrants racing on both downhill and slalom courses.
Schwarz, who is still recovering from an injury, told reporters earlier this week that he had been able to improve a lot in training on the downhill piste.
“I feel very much at ease on the downhill course. It’s more on the technical side so it could be a good fit for me, but of course there are many others that also feel at ease on that course, so I think it will come down to the slalom,” Schwarz said.
The 2,950 metre downhill race is scheduled to start at 1030 local time (0230 GMT) on Thursday in the Xiaohaituo mountains housing the Alpine skiing centre, which was newly built for the Beijing Games.
The slalom is due to kick off at 1415 (0615 GMT).
(Reporting by Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
