Three years after a nasty fall at the Lauberhorn, the Italian Giovanni Franzoni left everyone behind there.
The young Italian Giovanni Franzoni outsmarted the favorites and won the Super-G in Wengen, Switzerland. The 24-year-old took first place at the Lauberhorn ahead of the surprising second-place finisher Stefan Babinsky from Austria (+0.35 seconds) and the Swiss downhill world champion Franjo von Allmen (+0.37).
German hopeful Simon Jocher (+2.84) did not make it into the top 20 after a sluggish run, while Romed Baumann (+4.50) experienced a debacle in his 100th Super-G in the World Cup and missed the top 30.
First World Cup Victory for Franzoni
For Franzoni, it was his first victory in his 60th World Cup race. However, he is not an unknown name: in mid-December, he stood on the podium for the first time as third in the Super-G in Val Gardena, and he was a three-time Junior World Champion, including in Super-G in 2021.
Now he has made peace with the tricky course against the magnificent panorama of the mountain giants Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. In 2023, he suffered a severe fall there, a thigh muscle injury prematurely ended his season. “Strange,” he said, “three years ago I had the serious accident in the Canadian Corner. To be first now is wonderful.”
World champion Marco Odermatt, who finished fourth (+0.53), tipped his hat to Franzoni at the finish line. “I saw your run at the top, it was clean, it was strong,” said the Swiss. The Italian replied that he had also benefited from his starting number 1.
Odermatt was undone by the famous Kernen-S, and von Allmen made a mistake in the Canadian Corner. “It annoyed me because the coach had told me to be patient at that spot,” he said on ZDF . Nevertheless, he was “super happy” about third place.
For Jocher, the deteriorating visibility also played a role. “But I don’t want to make excuses,” he said: “It was much too cautious. I wasn’t fully awake and had to activate myself extremely to get my head in the game.”