CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) - The women’s World Cup downhill in Crans-Montana was called off on Saturday and moved to Sunday, with the scheduled super-combined event cancelled.
Thick fog delayed the first downhill after the Olympics for hours before the race was spiked in the afternoon.
It was a blow to race organizers who gathered 200 people to work overnight to make the new Mont-Lachaux slope ready to run after heavy snowfall the previous evening.
The second training session was cancelled on Friday due to fresh snow and soft conditions on the lower sections of the slope.
Good weather was forecast for Sunday, but there will nevertheless be a considerable financial cost.
“We are going to try to limit the damages,” Marius Robyr, president of the organizing committee, said. “But such a cancellation should turn out to be a loss of about 200,000 francs ($227,000).”
The region spent four million francs ($4.5 million) to build a fresh speed track, which was tested just before the Olympics with a three-race Europa Cup series.
Maria Hoefl-Riesch is the overall World Cup leader. The German has a 75-point advantage over Tina Weirather, who is out for the season with injury, and is 86 ahead of Marianne Kaufmann-Abderhalden, who will be cheered on by a passionate home crowd.
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