Gut has ‘good to be back’ day before Games
Former overall champion shows she’s a contender with first win since crash
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, ITALY— With Mikaela Shiffrin dominating the World Cup circuit this season, it can seem like a distant memory when the American was locked in a tight battle with Lara Gut for last year’s title.
That’s because that contest ended prematurely when Gut ruptured her left ACL last February in a crash during slalom warmups for the combined event of her home world championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Gut had surgery and missed the rest of the season. She returned at the start of this season but had recorded just two podiums results — both second-places — before winning the final super-G before next month’s Pyeongchang Olympics on Sunday.
It was Gut’s first victory since winning the downhill in Cortina almost a year ago.
“It’s good to be back — to be back winning,” Gut said. “In super-G I’ve always been fast . . . If I ski the way I can I’m always top 10.”
In a race on a shortened course that was shaped by strong winds, overcast conditions and overnight snowfall, Gut clocked one minute, 14.78 seconds for a 0.14-second advantage over Johanna Schnarf of Italy.
Nicole Schmidhofer of Austria finished third, 0.27 behind.
Shiffrin missed a gate midway through her run and Italian favourite Sofia Goggia hit a gate and also did not finish.
Shiffrin still holds a nearly insurmountable 876-point lead over Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein in the overall standings.
Gut won the overall title two sea- sons ago, which helped her erase memories of the 2014 Sochi Olympics — where she cried in disappointment after taking the bronze medal in the downhill.
“I know what it means to go to the Olympics now,” Gut said. “The first time you go to the Olympics it’s like discovering what it is and you have to tell yourself that it’s just a race . . . I’m going to try to give it something even more.”
MEN’S SLALOM: Norway’s Henrik Kristoffersen won his first World Cup slalom of the season Sunday, prevailing in Kitzbuehel, Austria, and ending Marcel Hirscher’s fiverace winning streak.
Carrying a 1.05-second lead over his Austrian rival from the opening run, Kristoffersen lost only 0.08 of his advantage in a wild second run in dense snowfall to claim his first victory of the season and 16th overall.
Kristoffersen set a World Cup record earlier this season by getting podiums in the first six slaloms without winning a race.
SLOPESTYLE: Teal Harle earned his second career World Cup victory by winning the slopestyle final on Sunday at Mammoth Mountain, Calif., that sealed his spot on Canada’s Olympic freestyle ski team.
The Campbell River, B.C., native scored 94.20 points on his second run for gold. Switzerland’s Andri Ragettli was second (92.60) while Evan McEachran of Oakville, Ont., captured bronze with 91.40 points.
“I was trying not to focus too much on what I needed to do to earn a spot for the Games,” said Harle, who will compete in his first Olympics.