Riesch ends Vonn's win run
Source: Agencies |
January 31, 2010, Sunday
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MARIA Riesch put an end to Lindsey Vonn's unbeaten run in downhills this season with victory in St Moritz, Switzerland, yesterday, two weeks ahead of the Winter Olympics.
The German slalom world champion, Vonn's closest friend and main rival on the World Cup circuit, had not won a downhill for more than three years but her third victory in the discipline, in one minute 41.31 seconds, came at just the right time, with the Vancouver Games on the horizon.
Vonn's clean sweep of the first five downhills of the winter had given the American the edge in the World Cup standings but Riesch kept alive her chances thanks to her unexpected feat on a terrain which appeared to suit Vonn better.
Riesch, whose last victory in the discipline dated back to December 2006 in Lake Louise, won ahead of France's Ingrid Jacquemod and Switzerland's Fabienne Suter.
Jacquemod was 0.79 behind for her third podium of the season while Suter finished 0.96 adrift.
Vonn lost her pace halfway down the Corviglia slope and had to be content with fifth place behind Sweden's Anja Paerson, winner of a super-combined on Friday.
Riesch had failed to finish the super-combined and said that disappointment had fired her up for yesterday.
"There were tears of rage and they helped me fight back today," she told reporters.
In the overall World Cup standings, Vonn leads Riesch by 61 points on 1,211, while Paerson lies third, on 886 points.
Vonn, Riesch and Paerson will battle it out again in a super-G today before turning their minds to the Olympics, which start on February 12.
In Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, Austrian Marcel Hirscher boosted his Olympic hopes when he won the last World Cup giant slalom before the Games yesterday.
Hirscher, the slalom and giant slalom junior world champion in 2008, won in a combined time of two minutes and 21.30 seconds, for his second World Cup victory after taking the giant slalom in Val d'Isere in December.
Fifth after the first leg, Hirscher, 20, executed a near-perfect run in the afternoon to beat Norway's Kjetil Jansrud and American Ted Ligety, who won Friday's giant slalom.
"Kranjska Gora is a good place for me, I love the slope and the facilities," said Hirscher, who earned his first World Cup podium in the Slovenian resort in 2008 and finished second on Friday.
Ligety, who finished 0.58 adrift of the Austrian, leads the World Cup giant slalom standings by 43 points from Italy's Massimiliano Blardone with one race left.
The last men's race before the Olympics is today's slalom on the same mountain.
Austrian team leader Benjamin Raich finished sixth to retain top spot in the Word Cup overall standings. Raich, on 967 points, leads Swiss Carlo Janka by 70.
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