In today's "Raiffeisen FIS Challenge”, both first and second places went to two Swiss: Nils Mani won in 1:27.89 seconds ahead of Lars Rösti (+0.43) and the Austrian Christopher Hörl (+0,45) who started for Moldova. The conditions were very good on the 'Piz Sella' course in Plan de Gralba, Selva/Wolkenstein.

Already at the FIS downhill 12 months ago Rösti had finished second and was beaten by a compatriot from the canton of Bern. In 2017 it was Marco Kohler from Meiringen, this time Mani from the Bernese Oberland, who had seriously injured his knee this spring. Now Mani wants to fight his way back into the World Cup team. "I hope to be on the Saslong in two weeks' time, but it will be a challenge" he sees his possibilities realistically. He has good memories of this race course: in 2016, he finished ninth in the downhill. Only once, a few weeks later at the combination in Wengen, he raced an even better results with a fifth place.

Christopher Hörl from Salzburg, who is racing for Moldova, finished third. In 2015, he suffered a severe injury to his metatarsal and lost hope of a continuation with the red-white-red team. Now, at the age of 29, he tries it with the team from the Eastern European country. Behind Hörl placed the two Austrians Stefan Babinsky (+0.51) and Markus Durager (+0.63) and four Italians from the European Cup team: Davide Cazzaniga (+0.73), Federico Simoni and Florian Schieder (both with +0.78), as well as Henri Battilani (+1.10).

You can find the complete results here.