GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (AP) — Corinne Suter got her first win in a women’s World Cup super-G on Sunday, a month after winning her first downhill.
The Swiss skier coped with tricky conditions on the Kandahar course to beat Austria’s Nicole Schmidhofer by 0.43 seconds and her Swiss teammate Wendy Holdener by seven tenths.
Italy’s Federica Brignone, who is Mikaela Shiffrin’s main challenger for the overall title, finished in fifth and closed the gap to the leading American to 145 points.
Shiffrin, who won the super-G world championship and World Cup title last season, is taking a break from ski racing since the death of her father, Jeff Shiffrin, last week.
Many racers struggled to keep their balance on the course, which caused difficulties because of its icy surface with patches of grippy snow.
The two winners of the first two super-G races this season, Germany’s Viktoria Rebensburg and Italy’s Sofia Goggia, both landed in the safety netting after similar crashes, while former two-time overall champion Anna Veith of Austria also failed to finish but avoided a fall.
All seem to have avoided injuries, but Rebensburg, who won a downhill on this course Saturday, had her left knee examined after she hit a gate while sliding off the course.
Suter became the fifth different winner in five super-G races this season.
The Swiss skier finished third in a race in Lake Louise, Alberta, in December and Sunday’s victory sent her top of the discipline standings, overtaking Brignone.
The women’s World Cup travels to Kranjska Gora in Slovenia for a GS and a slalom next weekend. The races have been moved from Maribor because of a lack of snow and mild temperatures.
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