Cornelia Hutter (Austria) won the super giant slalom on her home track in Altenmarkt-Zauchensee, her fifth World Cup win overall. With this success, she went to the top of the standings for the small crystal globe in the discipline, as the previous leader Sofia Goggia (Italy) fell and did not finish.
Cornelia Hutter, 31, had a rough start on the course and just before entering the final quarter she was well outside the podium places. But with some very skillful skiing in the final meters, as well as elegant handling of the difficult sections, she finished with a time of 1:13.17 min. Thus, the girl from the province of Styria ended the seven-year curse of Austrian women not winning any race on this track.
Second place was taken by Kajsa Vickhoff Lie (Norway), who drove to the middle of the track better than anyone else, but hit the door entering the final set of corners and finished nine hundredths behind the Austrian.
Lara Gut-Behrami (Switzerland) finished third (+0.21s), ahead of last month’s Val d’Isere winner Federica Brignone (Italy), with neither able to match Cornelia Hutter’s speed in the closing metres.
Sofia Goggia fell at the same turn that Kajsa Vickhoff Lie hit the door. However, the Italian was not so lucky and fell on the track. Sofia Goggia, who went down with the red bib as the leader in the event, still went down to the finish line unaided.
But that was not the case for Nadine Fest, who suffered a severe neck collision after failing to turn early enough. Austrian skier remained motionless and under medical observation for almost 10 minutes, during which time the race was stopped. She still managed to get to her feet before being carted off the track with an apparent injury to her left knee, and it was later revealed that she also had an injury to her right shoulder. She was taken to the hospital in Schwarzach, and her condition will be known later today.
Mikaela Shiffrin, who is recovering from a cold, missed the competition. As a result, her lead in the overall World Cup standings was decreased to 182 points, with Federica Brignone displacing Petra Vlhova for 2nd place.
Mikaela Shiffrin has 929 points at the top, Federica Brignone is in second place already with 747, and the third position is for Petra Vlhova with 722 points. Today’s winner climbed to 10th place in the standings with 340 points, and for the small cup she is first with 230 points ahead of Federica Brignone with 195 points.
