Saalbach, Austria---Olympic champion Matthias Mayer led an Austrian clean sweep of the first three places in Saturday's World Cup downhill at Saalbach.
The 24-year-old was a mere two-hundredths of a second faster than Max Franz, with world super-G champion Hannes Reichelt third, 0.21sec slower than Mayer.
The clean sweep on home snow went some way towards making up for the Austrians' poor showing in the downhill at the recent world championships in Beaver Creek where Mayer was a disappointing 12th and Reichelt 13th.
Mayer "skied like a madman", a grinning Reichelt said after the race.
"I just said to myself that I was going to go flat out and see what happened," Mayer admitted.
It was his second World Cup victory and came with a breakneck run which narrowly eclipsed a disappointed Franz's benchmark time set early in the session.
The first non-Austrian was Switzerland's Carlo Janka, who was fourth, while World Cup downhill leader Kjetil Jansrud of Norway, had an off day, finishing fully 1.19sec behind Mayer.
"I really didn't ski very well," said a dejected Jansrud, who is also contesting the overall World Cup title with yet another Austrian, Marcel Hirscher, and they will resume hostilities in Sunday's super-G.
It is the first time since 1999 that the ski circus has stopped in Saalbach, a resort on the edges of the Tyrol and Salzburg regions, which hosted the world championships back in 1991.
AFP
