Canadian skier Jack Crawford wins World Cup silver on 2026 Olympic course

Canadian Jack Crawford achieved his second Alpine Skiing World Cup podium of the season on Wednesday, taking silver in the downhill in Bormio, Italy.

Crawford’s time of one minute 55.08 seconds left him 0.4 seconds behind Austrian gold medalist Vincent Kriechmayr, who earned his 14th career World Cup victory in the downhill. Norway’s Aleksander Aamodt Kilde finished 0.28 behind Crawford in third.

Crawford, 25, had already won bronze in the downhill at Beaver Creek, Colorado, earlier in December. The Toronto native is also an Olympic bronze medalist after placing third in the alpine combined in Beijing.

The Austrian world champion skied the icy, bumpy 2,268 kilometer course to perfection to win the final men’s downhill of the 2022 World Cup.

Kilde was the World Cup downhill champion last season and has won three of the previous four downhills this campaign, with Kriechmayr being the only other winner – at another Italian resort, Val Garena, two weeks ago.

On Wednesday, Kriechmayr managed to stay out of trouble on the tough course, which will be used for the men’s downhill at the 2026 Olympics.

Despite the many bumps and rolls, he kept full control and never left his racing line, while most of his rivals struggled on parts of their runs.

« Winning here means a lot. It’s one of the classic events and every ski racer dreams of winning it once, » said Kriechmayr, who has already scored three podiums on the Stelvio without a win.

« Today was definitely my best race here. I wasn’t the fastest in the last section, but it was a reasonable race. »

After winning three runs this season and setting the fastest time by far in Tuesday’s final practice, Kilde was widely considered the favourite.

However, he had never achieved top-three results on the Stelvio. He was behind Kriechmayr’s time throughout his race and narrowly avoided a crash when he quickly regained his balance towards the end.

« Vince was just too good today, » Kilde said. « It was a good race but not good enough. »

2022 Men’s Final Thursday

Overall World Cup leader Marco Odermatt was fourth at 1.46 and didn’t lose much ground to Kilde in the standings. The Swiss skier is still 261 points ahead of his rival. The Italian Dominik Paris, six times winner, ranked 10th.

Three other Canadian skiers finished in the top 20, with Cameron Alexander of North Vancouver, BC, 12th (1:57.22), Brodie Seger — also of North Vancouver — 16th (1:57.78) and Jeffrey Read of Canmore, Alta., in 18th (1:57.93).

Two Olympic downhill champions, Switzerland’s Beat Feuz (2022) and Austria’s Matthias Mayer (2014), have missed the race due to illness. Last week, Feuz announced that he would retire next month.

The event started after a 10-minute delay after one of the precursors, who was testing the course before a race, crashed and the safety net had to be reinstalled.

A super-G on Thursday is the last men’s World Cup race of 2022.