Michael Schmid of Switzerland and Marion Josserand of France won the season-opening World Cup ski cross races on Monday.
The 24-year-old Schmid beat Andreas Matt of Austria in the final for his first World Cup title.
Tommy Eliasen of Sweden took third after defeating Casey Puckett of the US.
PHOTO: AFP
The 22-year-old Josserand defeated Austria’s Kathrin Gutensohn — a 42-year-old former Alpine skier — in the final for her first World Cup podium finish.
Kelsey Serwah of Canada took third after beating Ophelie David of France.
World champion Karin Huttary of Austria lost in the opening round.
The next World Cup ski cross races are held in Les Contamines, France, on Saturday.
■WHO WILL BE QUEEN?
AP, ZAGREB
The winner of yesterday’s World Cup night slalom on the Sljeme hill in Croatia was to receive the Snow Queen Trophy — even though it’s a men’s race.
The event has been part of the women’s World Cup calendar for many years and organizers added a men’s race for the first time last season, but didn’t change the name. Mario Matt of Austria won that first edition and is ready to repeat his success.
“I’ve been very fast in training,” Matt said on Monday after inspecting the course. “I hope to perform like I did in January last year.”
Last time, the 29-year-old Austrian slalom world champion also won in Adelboden, Switzerland, and in his native Schladming.
Yesterday’s slalom was only the third of the current season after Levi, Finland, and Alta Badia, Italy. A race in Val d’Isere, France, was canceled because of heavy winds.
The Zagreb race opened a month crammed with slaloms as Adelboden, Wengen, Kitzbuehel, Schladming and Garmisch-Partenkirchen are still coming up before the Alpine world championships in Val d’Isere next month.
“I am not thinking of the Worlds yet,” Matt said. “There are a lot of great races coming up and I want to concentrate on them first.”
Jean-Baptiste Grange won in Levi and finished second to Ivica Kostelic in Alta Badia to lead the standings after two races with 180 points. The Frenchman is 35 points ahead of Kostelic.
Overall World Cup champion Bode Miller is third with 80 points from his second-place showing in Levi, which means he has already gathered 12 slalom points more than in the entire previous season.
The 31-year-old Miller, starting with bib No. 17, will look to speed up things compared with last year, when he failed to qualify for the second run after nearly crashing out on the steep bottom part of the course.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB