Alpine News

The Austrian men are about to head overases for training camps in Chile, New Zealand and Argentina. 

The downhill team is taking off on Thursday to Chile, but without defending downhill World Cup champion Klaus Kröll. After his foot injury in the spring, Kröll does not yet feel up to the intensive training on snow. "Given my operation in early April I am still catching up on the training and need to build the base before I can get on the snow. But I am not losing sleep over that. I will take advantage of the upcoming few weeks to be able to return to the snow in late September, early October."

"Klaus is missing an important part of the season preparation. As soon as he can again train on the snow we will need to shift the gears up so that he can recover the missing training units. But I am not worried that he would not be fit at the start of the season. He knows exactly what he needs to do," says the Austrian men's head coach Mathias Berthold.

The Austrian downhillers are going to be in Portillo from 16th August-1st September and then in Chillan from 2nd September-7th September. The athletes training in Chile are Romed Baumann, Georg Streitberger, Hannes Reichelt, Benjamin Raich, Johannes Kröll, Franz Max, Frederic Berthold and Otmar Striedinger. Reichelt, Raich and Berthold will then continue on to Argentina with the GS/combined team that will be in Ushuaia until 15th September. Philipp Schörghofer, Marcel Mathis, Stephan Görgl, Florian Scheiber and Mayer Matthias will already travel to the end of the world on 24th August.

Meanwhile the tech team is headed to Wanaka in New Zealand from 19th August until 10th September. The athletes downunder include Mario Matt, Wolfgang Hörl, Marcel Hischer, Manfred Pranger and Marc Digruber.