Overall World Cup champ Lindsey Vonn clinched the season-opening super-G on Sunday, storming down the mountain to avenge a pair of downhill losses to German rival Maria Riesch.
Olympic downhill gold medalist Vonn claimed her 11th career super-G title and extended her win streak at Lake Louise to seven straight years by finishing in a time of one minute 20.72 seconds.
Riesch was second in 1:21.55, while American Julia Mancuso was third in 1:21.61 on the 1.97km Whitehorn Mountain course.
Photo: AFP
“Today I dropped the hammer a little bit more and believed in myself,” said Vonn, who barely escaped a near-crash on Saturday. “For me the bottom line is never giving up.”
Under sunny skies with temperatures noticeably chillier at -minus-20oC than the first two days of racing, Riesch seized the lead after starting from the 10th position.
She got a scare five skiers later when Mancuso charged out of the gate only to lose time on the flats. Riesch held onto the lead until skier No. 22 when Vonn attacked the hill with vengeance.
Photo: Reuters
Since her maiden World Cup victory here in 2004, the 26-year-old Vonn has captured at least one race in the Canadian Rockies, fashioning a dominating five-straight downhill win streak. Sunday was her first super-G win at Lake Louise.
“I have won the downhill here many times but never the super-G, so I am extremely happy,” Vonn said. “I always somehow get the win taken away from me here in Lake Louise in super-G and I have always lost by a very small margin so I wanted to make sure there was no room for doubt.”
Riesch captured back-to-back downhills on Friday and Saturday with Vonn coming in second both times as the two continue to play musical chairs with the top podium spots. Riesch won her first downhill in the Canadian Rockies in 2006.
Olympic downhill silver medalist Mancuso finishing sixth in Saturday’s downhill.
She also posted the fastest time in the second training run and at one point on Sunday looked like she might overtake Riesch for the lead, but lost time on the bottom half of the course.
Anna Fenninger and teammate Andrea Fischbacher finished fourth and fifth as the Austrian pair just missed out on the podium.
Riesch now has a 169-point lead over Vonn at the top of the overall World Cup standings.
MEN’S GIANT SLALOM
AP, BEAVER CREEK, Colorado
US skier Ted Ligety won a World Cup giant slalom on Sunday, edging Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud by 0.82 seconds.
So close to winning in the past on the closest thing the Americans have to a home hill, Ligety wasn’t about to settle for safe. He turned in two nearly flawless runs, including a hard-charging final descent.
“I didn’t want to hold back,” said Ligety, who has finished no worse than fourth in the GS at Beaver Creek since 2006. “I was just thinking I’d rather blow out having the lead than come down and feel like I choked. I was going hard and I was lucky to make it without any mistakes.”
Jansrud figured he had his first World Cup win after a fast final run, only to be foiled by his good friend who went down last.
Marcel Hirscher of Austria wound up third.
But this was Ligety’s time as he captured a World Cup race a few hours after Lindsey Vonn cruised to her super-G win in Lake Louise.
This was definitely a banner day for the Americans on the hill, producing two winners on the same afternoon for the first time in nearly four years.
“It’s really cool,” Ligety said. “It’s nice to have my name next to hers when she’s winning.”
Swiss skier Daniel Albrecht returned to racing and wound up in 21st place. Albrecht had a horrific crash nearly two years ago during a downhill training run at Kitzbuehel, Austria, that left him in a medically induced coma with brain and lung injuries.
The crowd gave Albrecht a rousing ovation after both of his runs.
Just his presence back on the mountain impressed Ligety, let alone his ability to be a factor in this race.
“That’s phenomenal. That’s really a credit to him and what a good skier he is now, and how really good he was before,” Ligety said.
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