The impressive Lara Gut won the Super-G at the German resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Sunday to extend her unbeaten run in the discipline since start of the…
ADVERTISEMENTThe impressive Lara Gut won the Super-G at the German resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Sunday to extend her unbeaten run in the discipline since start of the season.
The defending overall World Cup champion from Switzerland enjoyed a comfortable win and in doing so secured her 22nd career victory.
With her second place finish in Saturday’s downhill Gut has now reduced Mikaela Shiffrin’s lead in the overall standings to just 135 points. Technical specialist Shiffrin was not racing this weekend.
Gut has now won the first three super-Gs of the season.
The 25-year-old finished 0.67 seconds ahead of Austrian Stephanie Venier.
It was the first podium finish of her career.
Venier’s previous best was a sixth place in a super-G last month.
Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein had finished runner up to Gut in the first two super-G races of the season but this time had to settle for the last step of the podium in Garmisch.
She was 0.86 seconds off the winner’s pace but remains second in the discipline standings 80 points behind Gut.
The Speed Queen
Lindsey Vonn was absent from the World Cup circuit for 322 days after fracturing her leg and then arm.
Just six days after her return, Vonn was back to winning ways with success in the Garmisch downhill.
French skier Tessa Worley, fourth in the general world cup standings, explained why she thinks the American is the undisputed “speed queen” of the slopes.
She said: “I think that she is the best because today in the downhill, there is an awareness of commitment, but not in the sense you would think, such as jumping the bumps on the course like a madwoman or to take insane trajectories, but there is a commitment to the technique, to the skis.
‘‘It’s in the timing of a technical maneuver, trying to accelerate on every bend, trying to use the equipment in the best way in order to go as fast as possible.
‘‘It is true that in downhill, there is the speed of the course, of the slope and the line which is already rather extreme. So on top of that it is necessary to add the speed of the ski. And she does that very well, she is afraid of nothing and she always tries to go faster.”
Skiing Past
All the big names in alpine skiing have won at least once at Kitzbühel.
ADVERTISEMENTThe most recent victories went to Matthias Mayer in the super-G, Dominik Paris in the downhill and Marcel Hirscher in the slalom.
Jean-Claude Killy however set the bar high from the very beginning triumphing twice in as many days at the “Mecca” of Alpine skiing.
The Frenchman dominated the sport in the late 1960s.
He was the man to beat, but for most that was nigh on impossible.
During the very first season of the World Cup in 1967 the unstoppable Killy would win 12 of the 17 races in the inaugural campaign.
ADVERTISEMENTSix of those were consecutive including his Kitzbühel downhill triumph followed by his slalom victory the next day at the same legendary resort.
That season he won each of the three disciplines crowns and the overall title.
He retained his overall title in 1968 whilst adding Olympic Downhill, Giant slalom and slalom golds to his name.
That was his last competitive season as retired at the age of only 25.
Take off
ADVERTISEMENTIn ski jumping, after the victory of the Germans in the team competition of Zakopane, Poland’s Kamil Stoch took top spot in the individual event.
It was the 20th win on the elite circuit for Stoch, the fifth this winter and fourth in a row.
The winner of the prestigious Four Hills Tournament earlier this month was sixth after the first round but produced a stunning second jump to take the win, much to the delight of the 40 000-strong home crowd.
Stoch won with 287.4 points following leaps of 130.5 and 131 metres.
He held off three Germans for the victory.
ADVERTISEMENTAndreas Wellinger took second place with 284.2 points while his teammates from Saturday’s triumph Richard Freitag and Markus Eisenbichler were third and fourth respectively.
With the win Stoch extended his lead in the overall World Cup standings to 130 points over Norway’s Daniel Andre Tande.