Ski racer Andreas Sander narrowly missed his first World Cup podium at the World Cup dress rehearsal, but celebrated a sense of achievement after recent disappointing results.

The 33-year-old speed specialist finished fourth in the Super-G in Cortina d'Ampezzo and equaled his best career result in the World Cup. Sander was four hundredths of a second behind when Swiss Marco Odermatt won in third place.

"Today I finally found the attack again. There had to be an answer," said the veteran on ZDF, referring to his sobering 22nd place on Saturday. In 2021, Sander won World Cup silver in Cortina in the downhill.

The overall World Cup leader and yesterday's winner, Odermatt, accepted his eighth win of the season with an incredulous shrug. The advantage over the Italian Dominik Paris was 0.76 seconds, third was Daniel Hemetsberger (1.03) from Austria. Odermatt's constant rival Aleksander Aamodt Kilde from Norway retired after a driving error.

The Swiss is one of the big favorites at the Alpine Ski World Championships from February 6th to 19th. Despite Sander's positive outlier, the German men's team starts with outsider chances, their dry spell without a podium place continued in Cortina in the absence of Thomas Dreßen.

Josef Ferstl, Vice World Champion Romed Baumann and Dominik Schwaiger made a mistake and ended up on ranks 30, 37 and 39. Simon Jocher dropped out. The race was determined by falls and retirements: 21 of the 60 starters did not finish.