The best comes at the end: The badly shaken German downhill skiers made amends in an impressive way at the season finale and wrote a small chapter in ski history with the first double podium in over 31 years. Romed Baumann and Andreas Sander surprisingly finished second and third in the victory of Austrian Vincent Kriechmayr in Soldeu in Andorra.
Two German ski racers in the supreme discipline on the "Stockerl" – the last time this happened was on 11 January 1992. At that time, the later double Olympic champion Markus Wasmeier won in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the former world champion Hans-Jörg Tauscher was third. The last DSV athlete among the top 3 in a downhill was Thomas Dreßen when he won in February 2020 in Saalbach-Hinterglemm in Austria.
For Baumann, who was only nine hundredths of a second short of his third World Cup victory, it was the first podium in the World Cup since February 2015. Ten days after his debut on the podium, Sander (+0.13) finished second in the Super-G of Aspen in the top three again. Sanders' coup had "inspired him and showed: We have what it takes," said Baumann (37). "That's exactly what I started with," he added. His starting number one was "certainly an advantage", "but you have to use that first".
Sander (33) reported that he felt "extremely good" after overcoming material problems. Fortunately, I was able to show that again in the race." At the World Championships in February, the runner-up of the 2021 title fights had missed the medal ranks just as far as Baumann, who had won Super-G silver two years earlier.