Two tickets open

ÖSV surprise man has to qualify for Sölden

It's not just the red-white-red ladies who will be battling it out on the race slope in Sölden on Wednesday for the still open starting places for the World Cup opening on October 26 and 27. The men's race on the Rettenbachferner is also about the much-cited "sausage".

While the Mellau cousins Lukas and Patrick Feurstein have slipped into the top 30 of the World Cup start list due to the absence of athletes such as Aleksandr Aamodt Kilde (Nor) or Marco Schwarz through injury, thus saving themselves the ÖSV internal qualification, a third Mellau athlete, Noel Zwischenbrugger - who finished 13th in his first World Cup start in Val d'Isere in the previous season - is vying for one of the two free tickets.

Lukas Feurstein has secured his ticket for Sölden and is already in promising form.(Bild: GEPA pictures)

The 23-year-old Atomic racer's opponents are local hero Fabio Gstrein from Sölden, Adrian Pertl from Carinthia and Styrian speed specialist Stefan Babinsky, who is also improving in the giant slalom.

"I'm certainly not yet at 100 percent and where I was last winter," explains Zwischenbrugger, who was able to train on the Sölden racing slope for the first time in his career yesterday. "But the long steep slope should definitely suit me and even if the competition is strong, it should be possible to qualify for the race."