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Men's and women's downhill in Austria put back to Tuesday

Samstag, 3. Februar 2001 / 12:11 Uhr

St Anton (Austria) - The men's and women's world championship downhill ski races have been rescheduled for Tuesday after up to half a metre of fresh snow forced the cancellation of the high-speed events on their original weekend dates.

Officials determined that it would be impossible to run the men's race as snow began falling late Friday and continued into Saturday.
The cancellation by the race jury came at 6 a.m. after an inspection of the 3-kilometre Karl Schranz piste. The decision was made early to avoid traffic chaos as some 40,000 fans were expected for the blue-riband event of the 13-day championships.

The jury then also cancelled the women's race set for Sunday.
Under the new schedule, the men's combined event will go ahead as planned Monday and the original rest day Tuesday will be used for the women's (0930 GMT) and men's (1100 GMT) downhill races.
"Looking at the piste conditions and the weather we had to make an early decisions and schedule changes," said International Ski federation (FIS) spokesman Christian Knauth. (ba/dpa)