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The festival for the title fights in Italy continues: The German ski racers created the next sensation at the World Championships in Cortina d'Ampezzo thanks to Andreas Sander.
The athlete from Ennepetal won silver in the downhill on Sunday and secured the DSV team the third medal in Italy.
For the 31-year-old, it was almost enough to achieve a great triumph: The new world champion Vincent Kriechmayr from Austria was only a hundredth of a second missing.
Bronze went to Swiss co-favorite Beat Feuz (+0.18 seconds).
Before Sander, Romed Baumann had already taken silver in the Super-G and Kira Weidle in the downhill.
Florian Eckert won the last German men's medal in a World Cup downhill race in 2001 with bronze;
Hansjörg Tauscher became world champion in 1989.
"Extremely happy"
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"This is an absolutely sensational result, we can be very proud of the entire crew", said the German alpine boss Wolfgang Maier.
"Andy has never been on the podium, we are extremely happy with this result, nobody thought we could do that."
Sander agrees: "It's sensational, I don't even know what to say," Sander said on ARD.
“I can't really understand it.” The experienced athlete has been among the world's elite for years, but had never achieved a podium in the World Cup in his career.
Three fifth places - including this winter at the Super-G in Val Gardena and the Downhill in Kitzbühel - were his best results.
Andreas Sander
Source: AFP
The three other German starters on the difficult descent were not doing so well.
Thomas Dreßen, like favorite Dominik Paris, screwed up the decisive part of the track on his comeback and finished 18th (+1.68).
Baumann landed in 14th place (+1.30).
He slipped away after crossing the finish line, slipped under the boundaries and suffered cuts to his mouth and nose.
According to an initial examination, he was not seriously injured.
Dominik Schwaiger finished 22nd (+2.11).