ST. ANTON, Austria (AP) — Lara Gut-Behrami beat three Italian skiers Sunday to win a women’s World Cup super-G that ended early due to high winds.
The Swiss Olympic champion’s body language after finishing suggested she was far from happy with her performance, but her leading time still stood after all other favourites had completed their runs.
“It didn’t really go as I planned,” Gut-Behrami said. “In the flat part, I had a lot of mistakes and I never expected to be that fast.”
Gut-Behrami was 0.15 seconds faster than Federica Brignone, who won a shortened super-G Saturday when Gut-Behrami finished third, and 0.19 faster than Marta Bassino.
“I wasn’t able to push as I would have liked or at least as much as I had done in the previous race,” said Brignone.
“In the final part the snow was softer and I wasn’t able to speed well, to attack. A great weekend anyway, I’m very satisfied,” the Italian added.
Elena Curtoni was 0.52 back in fourth to add to the strong showing of the Italian team, which had to do without its biggest star, Sofia Goggia.
Goggia opted not to start as a precautionary measure following her crash in Saturday’s race. The Italian team said Goggia underwent MRI and CT scans at a clinic in Milan, but they revealed no damage to her right knee.
Mikaela Shiffrin did not race this weekend, resting after an intense block of technical races. The American was expected back next weekend at speed races in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, aiming for a record-setting 83rd women’s World Cup win to break her 82-win tie with Lindsey Vonn.
A downhill that was canceled Saturday after days of excessive snowfall in St. Anton and replaced with the shortened super-G was rescheduled for Cortina on Friday, replacing an initially planned super-G in the Italian Dolomites on that day.
The schedule for Cortina now includes two downhills on Friday and Saturday, followed by a super-G the next day.
The runner-up to Shiffrin in the overall standings, Petra Vlhová also didn’t compete this weekend. The former overall champion from Slovakia trails Shiffrin by 399 points.
Sunday’s race was interrupted after 46 starters because of gusts in the upper part of the Karl Schranz course. Six lower-ranked skiers were still waiting for their run, but organizers decided to call off the remainder of the race as conditions failed to improve.
Results were still valid since the minimum of at least 30 skiers had started their run.
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