GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN – Swiss ski star Lara Gut-Behrami won the last women’s World Cup super-G before the world championships for her first victory of the season, while Lindsey Vonn placed 13th on Sunday.
Gut-Behrami mastered the tricky turns in the middle part of the Kandahar course to earn career win No. 46, which put her in joined fifth place on the all-time female winners list.
“It’s nice. I was skiing well since a while, still missing something, so it’s great to be able to win again,” the defending overall champion said.
The world championships take place in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Austria on Feb. 4-16.
Gut-Behrami was 0.35 seconds faster than Kajsa Vickhoff Lie of Norway, while Federica Brignone was three-hundredths further back in third, a day after the Italian won the downhill on the same hill.
Sofia Goggia, who was runner-up to Brignone in Saturday’s race, placed fourth, ahead of teammates Laura Pirovano and Marta Bassino, as the Italian team finished with four racers in the top six.
Keely Cashman shared sixth place with Bassino for the American’s career-best result.
Vonn finished 1.4 seconds off the pace in 13th after she had failed to finish her previous two races. The American standout skied out of Saturday’s downhill when she missed a gate, but avoided falling.
Vonn returned to ski racing in December after nearly six years of retirement with a new titanium knee.
Last week, Vonn told The Associated Press that she plans to retire again after next year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics.
Last year, Gut-Behrami overtook leader Mikaela Shiffrin in the overall standings in the last two months of the season when the American was out nursing a knee injury.
The Swiss skier then had a slow start to the new campaign after missing the season-opening race in October. However, the defending overall champion then racked up three second places in Super-G before winning Sunday.
“It’s been a weird start of the season, obviously I was struggling a little bit,” Gut-Behrami said. “I had to find the confidence back, the way to push in the skis again.”
Gut-Behrami has now won at least one World Cup race in 11 of the past 12 seasons, with 2018-19 the only exception.
The start of Sunday’s race was delayed for 15 minutes as organizers needed more time to prepare the course after overnight snowfall and rain in the hours leading up to the race.
Ariane Raedler had a nasty tumble when she came off the course and lost balance over a patch of softer snow, but the Austrian got up quickly and appeared to have avoided injury.
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