Adrien Théaux tackles the Birds of Prey the best

At first, it felt hard to trust the Beaver Creek World Cup officials when they were saying that the course is in a great shape, as there were only very limited precipitations and quite mild temperatures in Colorado in this early winter. But after this morning’s inspection and according to the athletes who completed their first official training run this morning, the conditions on the Birds of Prey are fantastic, with a hard and compact snow.

Frenchman Adrien Théaux seems to have found the fastest line down the steep and technical Birds of Prey race track. Theaux podiumed two times in Beaver Creek. He claimed a second position at the World Cup in 2010 and a bronze medal at the World Championships in 2015, but his best downhill performance so far was a 8th place at Vail / Beaver Creek 2015.

The tricolore team not only placed Théaux at the top of the ranking today: Kitzbuehel 3rd Johan Clarey finished the training run in the second position, +0.25 off his colleagues pace, and fellow Brice Roger placed 5th +0.67 behind.

In between this strong French performance, Italy’s Peter Fill and Austria’s Max Franz were able to finish respectively in 3rd and 4th position.

Another training run is scheduled tomorrow, before the fight for World Cup points starts with a super-g on Friday (10h45 LOC - 18h45 CET), a downhill on Saturday (11h00 LOC - 19h00 CET) and a giant slalom on Sunday (09h45 / 12h45 LOC - 17h45 / 20h45 CET).

Full results available here