Finland's Hannu Manninen ended Ronny Ackermann's World Cup winning streak by taking Saturday's Nordic combined event in northern Italy -- a 10km cross country race with mass start combined with a ski jumping portion from the K95 hill.
Manninen piled up a winning total of 244.5 points with a fourth-place finish in the ski race and fifth place in ski jumping.
Felix Gottwald beat Austrian teammate Michael Gruber for second place, with 241.7 points.
Gruber, who led ski jumping with 101m, ended with 239.5 points.
Ackermann, coming off four season wins in as many World Cup events, finished fourth with 237.7.
Despite the defeat, the German athlete held a commanding lead in the World Cup overall standings with 450 points.
Manninen consolidated his second place with 360.
Todd Lodwick of the US placed eighth in Saturday's event, moving to 12th overall.
The next stage of the Nordic Combined World Cup will be at Oberhof, Germany, on Dec. 30.
Men's biathlon
Norway's men rushed off to an unchallenged triumph in Saturday's 4x7.5km relay race in Hochfilzen, Austria, ahead of the Belarussian quartet and France.
Led by World Cup leader Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, the Norwegians outdistanced runners-up Belarus by 2 minutes, 23.2 seconds to celebrate their first team win this season.
Bjoerndalen and teammate Halvard Hannevold paved the way for the victory with a solid performance at the shooting range and great skiing. Bjoerndalen missed only one target and Hanevold was faultless.
Second-placed Belarus, although only third on the slope, profited from a rule violation by Frenchman Raphael Poiree.
Poiree kept a spare bullet in his mouth while shooting instead of picking it from the stock. This led to a time penalty and cost the French second place.
Despite Poiree's error, France claimed the overall World Cup lead with 89 points, two points clear of Germany (87) and the day's winner, Norway (84).
Men's bobsled
American Todd Hays won the men's doubles Saturday at a bobsledding World Cup in Winterberg, Germany, with a sizzling second heat that beat two German Olympic champions on their home course.
Hays and pusher Steve Mesler put together a second run of 56.82, almost 4/10ths of a second faster than doubles gold medal winner Andre Lange or Christoph Langen, who piloted the four-man champions at Salt Lake City.
Women's luge
Silke Kraushaar won the women's World Cup luge race at Utah Olympic Park on Saturday in Park City, Utah, extending Germany's six-year unbeaten streak in the event.
Earlier Saturday, Italy's Reinhold Rainer won the first World Cup race of his 10-year career as the favorites in the men's race struggled.
Kraushaar, who set the Utah Olympic Park track's start record of 3.100 seconds en route to a bronze medal at the 2002 Olympics, tied that mark on her second run and had a winning two-run time of 1 minute, 28.853 seconds.
Sylke Otto, the gold medalist at Salt Lake, was second in 1:28.985, while Barbara Niedernhuber, the silver medalist in 2002, was third in 1:29.044.
The silver medal went to Germany's Denis Geppert, who finished in 1:32.393 while the bronze went to American Tony Benshoof (1:32.440), whose finish moved him into second in the overall World Cup standings behind Italy's Armin Zoggeler with four races remaining.
Speedskating
Canadian Jeremy Wotherspoon remained perfect for the season in World Cup speedskating 500m races when he won his fourth straight event Saturday in Kearns, Utah.
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