SPORTING DIGEST: SKIING

SPORTING DIGEST: SKIING

Austria's former world and Olympic downhill champion Patrick Ortlieb announced his retirement on Saturday after being badly hurt in training during the week. The 31-year-old veteran suffered a complicated compound fracture of his right thigh on Thursday in a crash on Kitzbuhel's Streif piste. The 1992 Olympic and 1996 world champion also badly dislocated and slightly fractured his right hip, tore lateral right knee ligaments and was treated for a minor lung injury. "The decision about my future was taken for me. I had always planned this to be my last season," he said from his hospital bed in Innsbruck. Ortlieb has had trouble gaining a place in this season's World Cup with his all-conquering team mates continually taking the podium places. He would have had to win Saturday's downhill on the Streif in order to get one of the four Austrian bibs for the World Championships in Vail, Colorado, next month.