ARE, Sweden — Dominik Paris shook his head as he crossed the finish line. The third skier to start in the world championship super-G on Wednesday, he had made technical mistakes that required corrections near the end of his run. He was sure he would be coming up short once again at a major championship.
Not this time.
Paris, who is from Val d’Ultimo, Italy, became a world champion for the first time, capping what was already the best season of his life.
“It’s really a magical year,” said Paris, who finished nine one-hundredths of a second ahead of two skiers tied for silver — Johan Clarey of France and Vincent Kriechmayr of Austria.
Paris, who away from the slopes is a guitarist and singer for an Italian death-metal band named “Rise of Voltage,” promised to celebrate with a big party in Are, the lively Swedish resort hosting the worlds. His only previous medal at a world championships or an Olympics was a silver in the downhill in Schladming, Austria, at the 2013 worlds.
But Paris had been building toward this victory. In the last two months, he won World Cup downhills in Bormio, Italy, and Kitzbuehel, Austria, which are considered the two toughest races on the circuit. He made the podium in six World Cup events over all this season.
The victory completed a turnaround for Paris, 29, who just over a decade ago turned his back on a promising youth career in skiing and spent a few months tending sheep in the Swiss Alps.
“He is the best guy in the world balancing the tactical side with the speed and the risk,” Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud, the 2014 Olympic super-G champion, said of Paris. “This is a course where you need to have that ability to do that. He does that the best in the world, so it’s a fair and deserved win.”
Kriechmayr, the top super-G racer on this season’s World Cup circuit, trailed Paris by nearly a half-second midway down but nearly clawed it all back the rest of the way — drawing applause from Paris in the leader’s spotlight.
Clarey was faster than Paris through the first two checkpoints but couldn’t match the Italian on the twisty lower section.
At 38 years and 29 days, Clarey became the oldest medalist at a world championship, although that might not have been his most noteworthy accomplishment. He managed to reach the podium despite travel difficulties that affected many athletes ahead of the event and led to a call from some countries for the super-G to be postponed.
Clarey was forced to endure a sleepless night at an airport in Stockholm, then had to take an eight-hour train ride up to Are on Monday. His skis didn’t arrive until Tuesday afternoon.
“It wasn’t ideal preparation for the world championships, for sure,” Clarey said. The race, he added, “would have been better one day after, for me and the German team and for a lot of the guys.”
“But,” he continued with a smile, “I can’t complain anymore.”
Matthias Mayer, the 2018 Olympic super-G champion, was also faster through the second interval. But he then flew wide off a jump and missed a gate.
Aksel Lund Svindal, the Norwegian great who is retiring after the worlds, managed to finish. But he never felt comfortable and placed 16th in the next-to-last race of his career. He shrugged after crossing the line.
“It turned out to be a much more difficult race than I expected,” said Svindal, who will race in the downhill on Saturday.
A lot was expected from the Norwegian team on a course set by one of its coaches, but Jansrud, racing despite having broken two bones in his hand two weeks ago, also struggled and placed 22nd.
“We are used to being 1-2-3,” Jansrud said, “but not today.”
The day, instead, belonged to Paris.
“It was very tough and fast, not the conditions that I like — I like icy and thumpy,” he said. “But I had a great feeling skiing down. Yeah, I’m very happy.”
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