The season so far
After three races in Downhill, Aksel Lund Svindal(260 points) currently sits at the top of the leaderboard with two wins in Beaver Creek and Val Gardena and the third place in Lake Louise. Beat Feuz(212 points) occupies the second place on the leaderboard with one win in Lake Louise, second place in Beaver Creek and an eighth-place finish in Val Gardena. Kjetil Jansrud has accumulated a total of 149 points, with one podium finish(second place) in Val Gardena, 11th place in Beaver Creek and 5th place in Lake Louise. Matthias Mayer is in fourth place with 116 points, mostly thanks to his second place finish at Lake Louise. Italian Dominik Paris sits at the fifth place with 100 points.
Training results
Today’s training session was canceled due to the bad weather(to much snow on the course), so we can only look at the yesterday’s training data. It looks like that the Italians took advantage of the home turf and Peter Fill managed to finish in first place, 0.08 of a second before his fellow countryman Christof Innerhofer. Dominik Paris finished in the fifth place, a little more than half a second after Fill. Austrians Matthias Mayer(4th place overall in the Downhill last season) and Hannes Reichelt(won the second downhill in Garmisch-Partenkirchen last season) occupied the third and fourth place. Aksel Lund Svindal finished his training run in the 9th place, while Kjetil Jansrud has finished in the 18th place with more than two seconds behind Fill. You can check the rest of the results here.
Race preview and predictions
Although the Italians should have at least some sort of home advantage, they rarely perform well at home. In the recent history, the only two men to win a Downhill race on home snow in Bormio are Christoph Innerhofer(won in 2008) and Dominik Paris(won in 2012). They could join Kristian Ghedina (5) and Herbert Plank (2) as the only Italian men with multiple World Cup Downhill wins in Italy. Anyway, their form is improving, as Christoph Innerhofer and Dominik Paris both finished in the top six in the last two World Cup Downhill events.
Beat Feuz won the first Downhill race of this World Cup season, in Lake Louise, his fifth World Cup win in total in this discipline. Feuz could win multiple World Cup Downhill events within a calendar year for the second time, after 2012 (2). He recorded three podium finishes the previous season and given that he is the current World Champion in this discipline, he should have decent chances for another podium finish. He also finished second in Beaver Creek less than a month ago. Priced 4.00 at Bet365 for a podium finish.
Austrian Max Franz claimed two of his four World Cup podium finishes in the Downhill in Italy, including his only win in Val Gardena on 17 December 2016. He is currently priced at 7.00 for a podium finish, which is a bit too high in our books.
As I mentioned before, Aksel Lund Svindal currently leads the race for the Downhill globe. He has won the last two Downhill events, in Beaver Creek and Val Gardena. He can become the first man to claim three successive Downhill wins in the World Cup since himself as he won the first three races of the 2015/16 campaign: Lake Louise, Beaver Creek and Val Gardena. Svindal has won 14 Downhill races in the World Cup, joint-sixth all-time among men alongside Michael Walchhofer. Franz Heinzer and Hermann Maier are in joint-fourth place on 15 victories. The Norwegian won the last World Cup Downhill race held in Bormio, on 29 December 2013. Only Walchhofer managed back-to-back Downhill wins in the Italian ski resort as he won on 28 and 29 December 2006. Svindal (3 wins) can become the fifth man to claim at least four World Cup Downhill victories on Italian snow, after Walchhofer (5), Kristian Ghedina (5), Franz Klammer (5) and Helmut Höflehner (4). Seven of Svindal’s 14 Downhill wins in the World Cup have come in the month of December, including six of his last eight victories.
Svindal has claimed a podium finish in nine of his last 11 World Cup Downhill appearances, including six wins, so he is definitely in an amazing form! He celebrated his 35th birthday on Tuesday 26.12.17. I expect that Svindal will extend his run with another great performance, and the odds of 3.11 at Pinnacle are looking a little bit too high given his recent performance. No bet under 3.00!
Prediction: Aksel Lund Svindal to win
Odds and Stake: 3.11 Pinnacle – 1 Unit
Prediction: Beat Feuz podium finish
Odds and Stake: 4.00 Bet365 – 1 Unit
Prediction: Max Franz podium finish
Odds and Stake: 7.00 Bet365 – 1 Unit
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