SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM – American skier Lauren Macuga posted the fastest time in the downhill portion of the new team combined event at the Alpine skiing world championships on Tuesday.
Her teammate Paula Moltzan will start the slalom portion later Tuesday with an advantage of 0.23 seconds over Germany 1, where Emma Aicher ran the downhill and Lena Duerr was scheduled to race the slalom.
Austria 1, with downhiller Mirjam Puchner and slalom racer Katharina Liensberger, was 0.38 seconds behind in third.
Downhill world champion Breezy Johnson, who teams with Mikaela Shiffrin, trailed by 0.51 seconds in fourth.
Lindsey Vonn finished a full two seconds behind Johnson and left her teammate AJ Hurt with a deficit of 2.51 seconds for the slalom.
Vonn had campaigned to race with Shiffrin on an American team that would have united the two most successful skiers in World Cup history, but the coaching staff decided to form the teams based on “season-best results” in both downhill and slalom.
The team combined entails one racer competing in a downhill run and another in a slalom run, with their two times added up to determine the final results. Each nation can enter up to four pairings.
The team combined will make its debut at next year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics and was first held at elite level on Tuesday, after it had been tested at junior world championships.
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