Skiing Roundup : Switzerland’s Heinzer Wins Fog-Delayed Race
Franz Heinzer won a fog-marred downhill race Sunday at Laax, Switzerland, to give Swiss skiers their 14th World Cup victory of the season.
Heinzer, 25, was timed in 1 minute 55.41 seconds for the 3,320-meter course, .35 ahead of Erwin Resch of Austria, with another Austrian, Peter Wirnsberger, taking third, another .40 behind.
The outcome was decided in the upper half of the race with Heinzer, who covered the course with a speed of 68.3 m.p.h., perfectly handling a spectacular jump en route to the best intermediate time. He kept that margin through the final part of the race.
The Swiss have won four of the five World Cup downhills, with Canada’s Rob Boyd registering a surprise victory at Val Gardena, Italy, last month. The Swiss men’s and women’s teams have 14 victories in 26 World Cup races.
The first three finishers were all among the early starters in the race before the fog descended on the Crap Sogn Gion course. Organizers halted the race after 33 skiers had crossed the finish line. It was resumed 45 minutes later when visibility improved again.
Pirmin Zurbriggen of Switzerland, winner of two earlier downhills this season, was eighth and thus regained the lead in the overall World Cup standings with 120 points, moving ahead of Italian slalom specialist Richard Pramotton, who has 118.
Sweden’s Camilla Nilsson won her first major World Cup race Sunday, winning a women’s slalom at Maribor, Yugoslavia, with an aggregate time of 1:23.59.
Nilsson, 21, clocked the fastest time on each run on Pohorje Mountain, completing the first in 41.76 seconds and the second in 41.83.
“The course was excellent, although it was hard,” Nilsson said. “I felt I was in good form following my training spells with Swedish men skiers earlier this season.”
The win put Nilsson in 11th place with 47 points in the World Cup overall standings. Switzerland’s Vreni Schneider was second in 1:23.84 and replaced Maria Walliser at the top of the overall standings with 126 points. Walliser, with 110 points, did not compete Sunday.
Hubert Schwarz of West Germany, who built up a big lead in the ski jumping competition, held on in the cross country race to win his first World Cup Nordic Combined event at Schonach, West Germany.
Schwarz, 26, won the ski jumping Saturday and went into Sunday’s 15-kilometer race holding a big lead over his closest rivals. He finished 35th in the cross-country race but that was good enough to give him overall victory with a total of a 421.875 points for the two events.
Vasily Savin of the Soviet Union finished second with a total of 416.70 points. Hippolyt Kempf of Switzerland collected 413.605 to place third and maintained his overall World Cup lead with 60 points.