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With a splendid trip to the silver medal, Romed Baumann gave the German ski team a sensational start in the world championships in Cortina d'Ampezzo.

The 35-year-old was only beaten by favorite Vincent Kriechmayer from Austria on Thursday in Super-G by 0.07 seconds and celebrated the greatest success of his career.

“Jawoooooll”, the racing driver from Kiefersfelden roared into the cameras after his brave drive on the difficult slope, after which tears of joy flowed.

Bronze went to the French Alexis Pinturault, which was similarly surprising.

Baumann switched from the Austrian to the German federation just under two years ago and wrote skiing history in Cortina: Never before has a DSV driver landed so far ahead in a Super-G at a World Cup.

"Everything went so easily today," said Baumann.

“I didn't breathe at the finish line.

It's unbelievable. ”For the first time since Florian Eckert's bronze medal in 2001 in St. Anton, a German speed driver won a World Championship medal.

Quite a few failures

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The newly designed course with two extremely difficult passages demanded everything from the drivers and resulted in a number of failures.

As the second best German, Andreas Sander raced to ninth place and thus also into the top ten.

The young World Cup debutant Simon Jocher finished 16th, Dominik Schwaiger was eliminated in one of the aforementioned key positions.

Romed Baumann

Source: dpa

“I think it's really cool,” summed up the German alpine boss Wolfgang Maier after the coup of his oldest protégé and praised his role in the team as a veteran and helper for the younger ones.

"Sensational, you can only take off your hat," said team-mate Sander and spoke of an "incredible achievement".

No longer wanted

As a native of Tyrol, Baumann had raced for the Austrian association for many years and won bronze in the combined combination at the home World Cup in Schladming in 2013.

But when at some point there were no results, it was no longer wanted because of the internal competition.

Because his wife is from Bavaria and he lived there, he signed on to the DSV and was quickly integrated after only initial skepticism.

Now he was paying back the trust.

“I was at the bottom, from a sporting point of view.

Now I'm almost at the top ”, said Baumann and expressed a big thank you to his family and the helpers who always believed in him.