Plan de Corones, Italy: Lara Gut-Behrami swept to victory in Tuesday (30th Jan, 2024)’s World Cup giant slalom at Kronplatz to pile pressure on Mikaela Shiffrin in the race for the crystal globe.
Swiss Gut-Behrami put in two rapid runs to finish over a second ahead of Alice Robinson and Sara Hector, who shared second place, to increase her lead at the top of the giant slalom standings and close in on Shiffrin.
The 32-year-old is 85 points ahead of Federica Brignone, who was 1.45sec off the pace in sixth on home snow, in the giant slalom.
Tuesday’s win capped a brilliant few days for Gut-Behrami in Italy where she won Sunday’s super-G at Cortina d’Ampezzo, which gave her a 10-point lead in the discipline standings.
She also placed second and fifth in the previous two downhills on the same Olympia delle Tofane piste in Cortina.
“It’s unbelievable, it’s crazy. To do something like that is unbelievable and I think it has been a few interesting days,” said Gut-Behrami after her fifth win of the season.
Her results in Italy mean Gut-Behrami took advantage of American skiing icon Shiffrin crashing out of Friday’s downhill in Cortina and missing the rest of this Italian swing of the World Cup season.
She now trails Shiffrin, who was one of a number of skiers to be injured in Cortina, by just 95 points ahead of another giant slalom and slalom in Soldeu in Andorra on 10th and 11th February.
Competitors have a decent break due to high temperatures causing races at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany, which were supposed to be held this coming weekend, to be cancelled.
“I’m happy with skiing but right now but I don’t have a clear enough mind to understand what’s going on. I’m happy and tired,” added Gut-Behrami.
“I hope I can keep on skiing like that in Soldeu, that would be amazing.”
Brignone, Gut-Behrami’s closest giant slalom rival, was livid at her performance, slamming her ski poles into the snow in frustration at another underwhelming display.
“Today I was convinced I was going to do well, I was aggressive and I wanted to push the skis,” said Brignone.
“But once again I made mistakes and I don’t seem to be able to be as fast as I was at the start of the season.”
One place above Brignone was Sofia Goggia, who is a specialist in pure speed events but scored her first giant slalom points of the season by finishing 1.39sec behind Gut-Behrami.
“I’ve worked really hard in this discipline. Of course the goal was not to win,” said Goggia.
“I’m happy that I could express myself, skiing freely on the second run.”
Newspakistan.tv/APP/AFP