Viktoria Rebensburg of Germany beat the fog down the mountain and took a surprise victory on Thursday in the Olympic giant slalom.
Rebensburg, who had never won a major race and was sixth after the opening leg, won in a two-run combined time of 2 minutes, 27.11 seconds.
Tina Maze of Slovenia was second, 0.04 seconds behind, matching her result in the Olympic super-G, and first-run leader Elisabeth Goergl of Austria added another bronze, 0.14 back, duplicating her downhill finish.
PHOTO: EPA
“Unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable,” said Rebensburg, 20, adding that it helped having super-combined winner Maria Riesch and giant slalom world champion Kathrin Hoelzl on her team. “I had not that much pressure.”
Hoelzl finished sixth and Riesch was 10th.
“She should experience this moment right now in the moment, because it all goes by like a film and tonight she will shake her head and wonder what happened,” Riesch said.
Defending champion Julia Mancuso of the US finished eighth.
The first run of the race was held on Wednesday, but dense fog forced organizers to postpone the second leg for a day. There was more fog on Thursday, and it got worse just after Rebensburg’s run.
“When I lay in my bed I was thinking: ‘OK, tomorrow’s the second run. Keep cool and keep calm,’” Rebensburg said. “It was tough, but in the end it was good for me. I won, so what more could I want?”
Rebensburg was only eight years old when her idol, Katja Seizinger, won the last of her three Olympic golds at the 1998 Nagano Games.
“She was so unbelievably good,” Rebensburg said. “She made so many gold medals, I always look up to her and I never thought that I could ski on a line with her, winning a gold medal at an Olympic event.”
Rebensburg’s best previous result was second in the last World Cup giant slalom before the Vancouver Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
Before that, she had never finished on the podium.
Rebensburg has been threatening to break out for several seasons.
She finished eighth in giant slalom at the 2007 world championships in Are, Sweden, when she was just 17; then was ninth at last year’s worlds in Val d’Isere, France.
At the 2008 junior worlds in Formigal, Spain, Rebensburg won gold in super-G, silver in giant slalom and bronze in downhill. She did one better in last year’s juniors at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, winning the super-G and giant slalom.
“It’s so small, just three journalists,” Rebensburg said, recalling those junior victories as hordes of German and international media surrounded her to ask about this win.
Rebensburg’s coach, Christian Schwaiger, set the opening run.
The postponement, plus an early start time of 9:30am, took some of the drama out of the race. Fewer fans were on hand compared with Wednesday, and even Rebensburg barely celebrated after finishing her run, assuming that one of the five remaining skiers would beat her.
Maze and Goergl both lost time at the beginning of their second runs, with the fog worst on top, then made up time on the bottom — but not enough to beat Rebensburg.
Only after Goergl came down did Rebensburg start pumping her fists.
Like the first leg on Wednesday, organizers again rushed to get the race in, sending down racers at 60-and 75-second intervals — meaning there were often two skiers on the course at a time — and abandoning TV breaks before the first 30 racers came down and the medals were decided.
The short intervals created problems in the first leg, with Mancuso’s first trip down interrupted because teammate Lindsey Vonn crashed out immediately before her — breaking her right little finger. Mancuso had to be brought back up for another try and eventually placed 18th in the opening leg. The Californian had the third-fastest second run to move up 10 spots in the final standings.
While she won the giant slalom at the 2006 Turin Games, Mancuso entered with low expectations after a two-year dry spell. After taking silver in downhill and super-combined, she leaves the games content.
“It’s been a long couple weeks, and the good thing about yesterday is I still have the pride of my two silver medals,” Mancuso said. “There’s lucky days, unlucky days ... I’m psyched I was able to lay down a pretty good second run today, and it wasn’t enough, but I really went out and did my best, so I’m proud of that.”
Mancuso turned down an offer from coaches to race in yesterday’s slalom, the final women’s Alpine event of the Games.
Maze has had a stellar Games, also finishing fifth in super-combined.
“It’s great. I didn’t expect that I would take two medals,” Maze said. “I was never racing so good at the big events, but this time it’s different, and I skied confident.”
Goergl’s medal haul now matches that of her mother, Traudl Hecher, who also won two Olympic bronze medals — in downhill at the 1960 Squaw Valley Games and 1964 Innsbruck Games.
Goergl also won a bronze in super-combined at last season’s worlds, and she was already claiming family bragging rights.
Fabienne Suter of Switzerland finished fourth and Kathrin Zettel of Austria was fifth. Giant slalom standout Tanja Poutiainen came 13th and Swedish veteran Anja Paerson was 22nd — even though her father and coach, Anders, set the second run.
Former world No. 2 Paula Badosa has withdrawn from this week’s Wuhan Open, organizers said on Tuesday, amid a racism row over an online photograph. Tournament organizers said the Spaniard had pulled out of the WTA 1000 tournament, citing a gastrointestinal illness, hours before her first-round match against Australian Ajla Tomljanovic. News outlets including Britain’s the Telegraph earlier reported that Badosa had posted a photo on Instagram in which she appeared to imitate a Chinese face by placing chopsticks on the corners of her eyes. The photo was taken last week in a restaurant in Beijing, where she reached the semi-finals of the
Shin Oebori coaches the Fukagawa Hawks youth baseball team in Tokyo, and he is very aware how Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani touches his players. “With Ohtani, the kids think everything is possible,” Oebori said, wrapping up practice yesterday on an all-dirt field set alongside a local Buddhist temple, below an elevated highway, and in the shadow of tall apartment blocks in central Tokyo. “Nothing is impossible with him. A dream is not a dream,” Oebori said, stepping out of the fenced practice field that keeps balls from landing on the temple grounds. None of the players hitting sponge-soft baseball has reached
Italian defender Marco Curto has been banned for 10 matches for racially abusing South Korean forward Hwang Hee-chan while playing for Como 1907 against Wolverhampton Wanderers in a pre-season friendly in July. Curto, who is on loan from Como to Serie B club Cesena, would serve half of the punishment immediately with the other half suspended for two years. “The player Marco Curto was found responsible for discriminatory behavior and sanctioned with a 10-match suspension,” a FIFA spokesperson said. “The player is ordered to render community services and undergo training and education with an organization approved by FIFA.” Wolves said the club would
CRICKET Azhar’s 59 leads Stallions Aashir Azhar’s blazing half-century guided the Taipei Stallions to victory over Taipei Super 11 in the Taiwan Premier League’s Group A at the Yingfeng Cricket Ground in Taipei yesterday. The Stallions were 102-3 and into the 12th over of 20 when Azhar came to the crease. He hit seven sixes and two fours in the 25 deliveries he faced to push his side to 171-5. Gokul Kumar was the star with the ball for Super 11, taking 3-17. In the reply, Deepak Vishnu outscored Azhar with 77 from 50 balls, but nobody else got past 20 as
RSS