Austrian skier Marlies Schild made it three wins from the three World Cup slalom races this season here on Tuesday.
The 30-year-old — already a winner in Aspen and Courchevel — recorded her 30th win in the discipline and 32nd overall World Cup success beating German ace Maria Hofl-Riesch by 0.46 seconds, while Slovenia’s Tina Maze was third, 0.82 seconds adrift.
Schild set up her victory with a brilliant first leg where she established a sizeable advantage over Maze with Hofl-Riesch third fastest.
Photo: AFP
Her victory places her eighth in the table of overall World Cup wins, someway behind all-time leader fellow Austrian Annemarie Moser-Proll, who recorded 62 career wins.
US superstar Lindsey Vonn, this season’s overall World Cup leader, is the most successful skier still competing with 46 wins.
Schild reveled in her red-hot form, which is making her well nigh unbeatable.
“It’s a really impressive number [the 32 World Cup wins],” she gushed. “All the victories are important and I have to really concentrate on all the races.”
“It is good to be cast in the role of favorite, especially on one’s home patch,” Schild added. “But that uses up a lot of strength. On the other hand when everything goes well it is really pleasing.”
Hofl-Riesch had skied against her doctor’s advice after she had been told to rest for a week after feeling pain in her knee on Sunday.
“During the race, I didn’t feel any pain, but at the end of it, it [the pain] had returned,” said Hofl-Riesch, who won here last season and was second in 2009.
“At the moment, it is almost impossible to beat Marlies Schild in slalom,” she said. “She is the best, but perhaps in one race she will have a dodgy moment and then it is vital that I benefit fully from it.”
Vonn, never at ease in the slalom, finished a creditable eighth to take her total to 554 points in the overall standings in front of Schild, who has 324 points, with German Viktoria Rebensburg, who is not competing at this event, third on 286 points.
This slalom replaced the one first scheduled to be raced in the Finnish resort of Levi last month, but which was canceled owing to a lack of snow.
In related news, the French ski resort of Chamonix will host the men’s World Cup downhill that had to be suspended last weekend at Val Gardena, the Italian Winter Sports Federation announced on Tuesday.
Saturday’s downhill had to be called off after just 21 skiers had raced because of strong winds.
The race will now go ahead at Chamonix on Friday, Feb. 3, while the resort will also host another downhill the next day and a super-combined on the Sunday.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For