The women’s Super-G opens the World Ski Championships today with buoyant American Lindsey Vonn setting the benchmark for her wannabe rivals.
Although not noted as a strong Super-G skier, Vonn surprised everyone by winning the Garmisch World Cup event on Sunday, the last before the worlds, and warned that the tough course in Val d’Isere could be a good omen.
“It really boosts my self-confidence,” she said of her win in Germany. “I feel I am well prepared in all events and my confidence is high.
“I’m looking really forward to the downhill and super-combined,” the World Cup overall leader said of events in France.
“I’m not among the favorites for the Super-G, but it is a difficult track and so perhaps this is a good sign. I’m in form, I have confidence in myself and my equipment. But I haven’t won anything yet and there is still a lot of racing,” Vonn said. “I’m going to try, and just be as physically prepared and mentally prepared for each race as I possibly can. It’s going to be a really tough couple of weeks but I’m going to be as well prepared as I can be, fight really hard and hopefully it goes well.”
The women will race on the remodeled Rhones-Alpes piste on the Solaise mountain, a black run that offers no mercy to the racer with a 605m drop from start to finish.
Only introduced to the world championships in 1987, the Super-G is a speed event but unlike the downhill there can be no pre-race training on the course, making the one-run event a real test of guts.
Although they have a one-hour inspection of the course this morning, racers face the prospect of launching themselves off into the unpracticed, daring to push speed against the ability to make turns on the icy run that ends with the aptly named “Bosse des Dames,” the ladies’ jump.
While Vonn would have been on the margins of a being dubbed a real contender before Sunday’s win in Garmisch, other skiers who will fancy their chances on the technical course will be Sweden’s Jessica Lindell-Vikarby, Swiss duo Fabienne Suter and Lara Gut, and Italian Nadia Fancini.
Swede Anja Paerson won the event at the 2007 worlds in Are, with Vonn posting a surprise second finish and Austria’s Renate Goetschl taking bronze.
Paerson finished second behind Vonn in Germany and can never be ruled out.
Lindell-Vikarby finished third, Fanchini fourth, fancied German Maria Riesch was fifth and Suter sixth, all within 0.83 seconds of Vonn.
Riesch, who stands second in the overall World Cup standings behind close friend Vonn, warned that she was prepared for the two-week ski fest here.
“I’ve come to the world championships with a good feeling, I am ready,” Riesch said. “Things weren’t quite 100 percent right [on Sunday]. Lindsey showed she was better.”
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