Wengen Downhill World Cup Race - Lauberhorn

Austrian Hannes Reichelt won the 85th running of the Lauberhorn downhill ski race, breaking Swiss hearts as he edged out home favourites Carlo Janka and Beat Feuz in a great race in fantastic conditions, following heavy snow in the previous 24 hours. The race had been swapped with the Slalom race from its traditional Saturday date to the Sunday, because of the weather report, and it proved a wise decision as both races successfully went ahead.

The 2010 Lauberhorn winner Carlo Janka, who had skied so well in the training runs as well as in the downhill section of Friday's super-combined race (which he won), lead the race for a long time having stormed down in bib number 3 in a time of 2:36.28, providing more evidence that he was returning to form following years of health problems. Beat Feuz, another previous Swiss winner back in 2012, and like Janka, also trying to continue his comeback following a few seasons of injury and illness stormed down the Lauberhorn course in a magnificent 2:36.26, just two-hundredths of a second off Janka. Championship leader Kjetil Jansrud was extremely close all the way down but a small mistake down near the bottom of the course cost him some vital speed for the final half minute of the race and he missed out on the Swiss duo by nearly a second.

Janka had won the Lauberhorn in 2010 and it looked like his return to form might lead to him joining the list of greats who had won the race more than once. However, Reichelt, who had come 2nd in last seasons Lauberhorn race, had other ideas and went one better as he hurtled down through the famous sections one after the other, just slightly behind Janka's intermediate timings until he stole victory in the very last 20 seconds of the race with a magnificent performance in the Ziel-S. Last season's Lauberhorn winner Patrick Kueng gave a great effort in defending his title but finished just short of the podium, and he wasn't the only home skier to have a good day as an incredible 7 racers out of the top 12 were all Swiss racers !

Patrick Kueng gave Switzerland an unexpected home victory on a course that had been shortened due to the weather. The morning had started brightly enough but conditions dramatically changed before mid-morning as clouds rolled in along with some extremely high winds . The race organisers decided it wasn't safe enough to start the race at it's traditional location but decided to go ahead from further down, missing out on the iconic Hundschopf and Minsch-Kante sections. Being the longest downhill on the World Cup circuit, it still meant the Lauberhorn race was one and a half minutes long, and 30 year old Swiss skier Patrick Keung took advantage to claim victory. Keung's first world cup victory had come earlier in the season in the Super-G at Beaver Creek, but this, his first ever downhill victory, in one of the sport's classic events, in front of a delirious home crowd, will be hard for him to top. Austrian Hannes Reichelt and Norwegian Aksel Lund Svindal took the other two places on the podium.

French racer Johan Clarey became the 1st man to break the 100mph barrier in a downhill race but could still only finish 5th as Italian Christof Innerhofer became the first Italian since Kristian Ghedina in 1997 to win the Lauberhorn race. The Austrian pair of Klaus Kroell and Hannes Reichelt pushed Innerhofer close as three racers broke the 100mph mark, although surprisingly Innerhofer wasn't one of them ! World Cup leader Aksel Lund Svindal was going extremely well, even faster than Innerhoffer on the opening time checks, but the Norwegian's ski inexplicably came off just after negotiating the famous Hundschopf jump and he crashed out into the netting. Clarey clocked 100.6mph to surpass the previous downhill record of 98mph, set by Italian Stefan Thanei back in 2005, and the previous record was beaten three more times during the weekend, with Swiss skier Carlo Janka recording 98.66mph (albeit in the downhill part of the super-combined event), then Canada's Benjamin Thomsen with 99.3mph and Austria's Hannes Reichelt recording 99.6mph. It's thought that the hard-packed snow, slightly warmer temperature at race-time and the fantastically clear visibility all combined to produce the perfect conditions for the speed of the course down on the Haneggschuss section.

Fantastic sunny weather, an exciting race, and forty thousand Swiss fans screaming on a home win, made for a fantastic 82nd running of the Lauberhorn downhill race at the classic Swiss resort of Wengen. 1st out of the blocks came Austrian skier Hannes Reichelt who'd set the fastest time during Friday's training run. His time of 2 minutes 35.75 seconds looked fast in comparison to the training times, and so it proved to be as the following set of skiers failed to get anywhere near it. The only skier out of the first ten to come down to look like challenging it was Carlo Janka. The Swiss skier, who has suffered from back injuries in the last year, showed signs of a return to form as he came in just 0.15 seconds behind Reichelt, whilst six skiers later Italian racer Christof Innerhofer got even closer - just 5 hundredths of a second behind. The Austrian held 1st place until bib 16 came down - the new Swiss sensation Beat Feuz. The 24 year old from Schangnau came flying down the Lauberhorn in 2 minutes 35.31, an incredible 0.44 seconds faster than Reichelt. Immediately after Feuz came Didier Cuche, and despite winning the overall downhill title four times, the Swiss legend was still looking for his first victory here, and whilst every Swiss race fan and every neutral would love to see the likeable 37 year old claim victory here it just wasn't to be. His was always behind the time of Feuz and could never claim any time back, eventually finishing nearly 1 and a half seconds behind. Last years Lauberhorn champion Klaus Kroell was flying down soon after, he had a fine run but couldn't match last year's feat, although his time of 2:36.20 was extremely respectable and put him into fifth place at the time, and 6th by the end of the race. The 2009 champion Dider Defago and Norwegian star Aksel Lund Svindal were soon following, but neither of them troubled the top 10, let alone Feuz, so it was down to Bode Miller as the last real challenge, and it was hearts-in-mouths time for Feuz and the masses of Swiss fans lining the course as the American hurtled down the slope, with the split times see-sawing between just ahead and just behind. Just as it looked like Bode might claim his 3rd Lauberhorn victory following back to back victories in 2007 and 2008, disaster struck and he lost half a second with a mistake right at the final section of the race that saw him end up in 5th place, 0.77 seconds behind, a shame as his run had deserved at least a place on the podium. Just as it looked like Feuz could sit back and relax their was one more potential shock on the cards, as another Swiss youngster Marc Gisin literally flew down the first half of the course and was ahead just before the halfway mark only to lose an edge and nearly crash out. He somehow managed to get back on track and incredibly claw some time back despite the error but the final energy-sapping sections would cost him his chance and he eventually finished back in 11th, but it was a fitting finale to a fantastically entertaining race. An incredible 66,000 spectators watched the three days of racing, a new record for the event and 4,000 up on the previous year.