Norway’s Alexander Steen Olsen captures gold in men’s junior GS
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Karina Schwartznau
It was a story of second-run comebacks in Tuesday’s junior world championship GS. Led by Norway’s Alexander Steen Olsen and Italy’s Filippo Della Vite, the men put on a show with Austrian Lukas Passrugger moving up 27 positions to round out the podium in third.
Wearing bib 1, Steen Olsen opened up the men’s GS with the fastest first run time. Behind was Della Vite wearing bib 2 followed by Norwegian teammate Oscar Zimmer. Steen Olson had a 0.69-second lead going into the second run and although fell off the pace, was able to keep his position for the win.
“It’s amazing for me,” said Steen Olson. “It’s been a little bit rough GS season so for sure this win helps a lot with the confidence and hopefully I can build on that the rest of the season. For sure really nervous at the start and luckily I made it down with a good time and I’m stoked on that.”
Della Vite was able to narrow his gap from Steen Olson on the second run, finishing 0.60 seconds behind to maintain his silver medal position.
“I’m really happy,” said Della Vite. “The first run I was a little bit slow and the second one was better. I’m so happy about my performance. I didn’t know who was leading so I just put my energy into my performance.”
After a difficult first run, Passrugger was 2.06 seconds out of first and narrowly made the top 30. Running first for his second run, he trusted in his performance and moved up 27 positions, surpassing Zimmer for his second junior world medal after the team event the day before.
“First run was not so good, it was all or nothing on the second run,” said Passrugger. “Everything was perfect so I landed in third place. I know what to do to be fast so I tried to bring it down.”
After placing 28th and making the flip in the first run, Canada’s Raphael Lessard turned it on for the second run and held the second-fastest time on the course to finish ninth overall in the event.
“Top to bottom, I felt really good,” said Lessard. “I was surprised to be 0.7 behind so I thought it must have been a slow run. But I stayed in there and ended up moving up 19 places and finished ninth overall.”
Lessard led the way for the North American skiers. Isaiah Nelson was the top finisher for the U.S. in 19th place.
The FIS Alpine Junior World Ski Championships wrap up Wednesday with the men’s slalom and women’s giant slalom events.
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