Who would have thought, it's snowing.

Due to persistent snowfall in Yanqing, the final of the Olympic giant slalom at the Winter Games has to be postponed.

The second round will not start before 3 p.m. local time (8 a.m. CET in the FAZ live ticker for the Olympics, on ARD and on Eurosport).

Originally, the medal drive was supposed to start at 1:45 p.m. (6:45 a.m.).

Achim Dreis

sports editor.

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After the first run, which had already started under difficult weather conditions, the Swiss Marco Odermatt, who started the race as the favourite, feels the fastest and completed the short course in 1:02.93 minutes.

Austria's Stefan Brennsteiner (+0.04) and world champion Mathieu Faivre from France (+0.08) follow with a razor-thin deficit.

Julian Rauchfuss was the only German to reach the finish line, but he was 5.3 seconds behind in 30th place.

For the German hopeful Alexander Schmid, the race was over after just 20 seconds: with starting number 9 and an interim best time, he pulled in after a driving error.

"Of course I had other plans."

Slalom specialist Linus Straßer also retired.

He wanted to warm up for his special discipline on Wednesday, but fell in the deep snow.

"I can't see anything," said the Italian Luca di Alipandrini on behalf of all the drivers when he had reached the finish line in the snow after the blind flight without any ground visibility.

The failure rate was correspondingly high.

Of the 89 starters from 62 nations, only 54 reached the finish line, including the only Indian at the Winter Games: Arif Khan, who finished penultimate in 1:22.35, almost twenty seconds behind.

The Chinese organizers seemed completely overwhelmed by the persistent amounts of snow at this Olympic competition.

Instead of a sliding squad of two or three hundred people who could slide down the slope on skis and thus clear the fresh snow, they first tried brooms.

After the first run in the morning could still be completed to some extent, the weather became even more problematic in the afternoon.

The borderline conditions on the "Ice River" slope on Xiaohaituo Mountain also caused the women's second downhill training session to be cancelled.