Laura Pirovano – Ready Set Sport

The ultimate speed machine

Lara Gut-Behrami can’t stop and won’t stop winning. The ultimate speed machine scored back-to-back wins in Val di Fassa, securing her lead at the top of the Overall standings.

Photo credits: Eurosport & Alessandro Trovati for AP Photo

By Daphne Seberich

Another day, another victory for Lara Gut-Behrami. The Swiss speed athlete dominated the second Downhill race in Val di Fassa, Italy. The Passo San Pellegrino course, which hosted the 2019 FIS Alpine Junior World Championships, was a replacement for the Olympic Test events in Beijing, which were canceled due to the pandemic.

Back-to-back wins seem to be the “Gut-way” of doing things. She’s completely commanding the Super G standings, with four events out of five won in a row, not to mention her incredible World Championships gold medal in Cortina. Can she recover and conquer the Downhill Crystal Globe as well?

Resilient teammate Corinne Suter managed to score a back-to-back podium result, although improving the position. On Friday’s race, the Swiss speedster earned third place. This time, she was just behind unbeatable Gut-Behrami in second, 32 hundredths off the pace. The reigning Downhill World Champion probably expected a victory from this speed weekend but can still consider herself pleased with the results.

Concluding the top-three, Kira Weidle stood on the lowest step of the podium for the third time in her World Cup career. The German Cortina Downhill silver medalist seemed to be in her best physical condition after her breakthrough on the Olympia Delle Tofane course.

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To kick the race off, Elena Curtoni set the time to beat at 1:26.54. Three seconds slower than the winner’s time the day before. Jasmine Flury didn’t have a hard time beating the Italian’s performance. She took over the provisional lead of the race.

Breezy Johnson needed a podium result to still have a chance at the Downhill small Crystal Globe. A too pronounced lean towards a gate on the steepest part of the slope provoked her crashing into the barriers. A mistake that proved to be fatal for Johnson’s standings.

The Swiss Giant Slalom specialist Michelle Gisin seemed to be ahead of teammate Flury throughout her run, posting green intermediates. Only one-hundredth of a second of advantage aided her to dethrone the provisional leader.

2021 Downhill World Champion Corinne Suter blew it out of the park, serving her teammates Gisin and Flury over 49 and 50 hundredths of advantage. After five racers, the competition saw an all-Swiss podium, but Kajsa Vickhoff Lie ended the streak by placing behind Suter in second.

Friday’s Val di Fassa winner Lara Gut Behrami was just on another planet. Her advantage over provisional leader Suter increased intermediate by intermediate. The quality of her skiing was just unlike any other. Only injured Sofia Goggia could have attempted to beat the Swiss speed specialist.

Cortina Downhill Silver medalist Kira Weidle was skiing a clean racing line, but a little bit more aggressiveness was necessary on the Passo San Pellegrino slope. The German managed to recover over three tenths in the final part of the piste, earning a place on the lowest step of the podium.

After the tenth racer, Federica Brignone, the standings were in favor of the Swiss, with all of their athletes placed in the Top-6. The Italians were the worst team on home soil, being respectively all in the last three positions of the rankings.

Val di Fassa runner-up Ramona Siebenhofer attempted back-to-back podium positions. She came short of third place, losing out on Weidle’s position by eight-hundredths of a second.

The best Italian on home soil in Friday’s race, Laura Pirovano, proved to be Italy’s only hope for a good result, placing fifth in ex aequo with Norwegian Lie.

Petra Vlhova, who sees in Gut-Behrami the biggest competition and threat for the Overall Crystal Globe, tried to score a Top-10 finish as an attempt to not losing out on too many points against the Swiss. A 1.29 seconds delay was unfortunately not enough for a good result.

Photo credits: Sportnet – SME & Olympic Channel

107 points now separate the two contenders, with Gut-Behrami in the lead. Can Vlhova turn the tables around in Jasna, where two technical events (her specialties) will be held? And can Gut-Behrami go home at the end of the season with three Crystal Globes (Downhill, Super G & Overall)? The injured Sofia Goggia has now only a 97-points lead over the Val di Fassa winner and 80 over World Champion Suter. The ultimate showdown will be in Lenzerheide, where the big finals of this Alpine Skiing 2020/2021 season will take place from March 15th-21st.

Photo credits: Samuel Truempy for PHOTOPRESS

She’s unstoppable.

Lara Gut-Behrami proves to be unstoppable on the speed disciplines, especially when considering her most recent results at the 2021 Cortina D’Ampezzo FIS Alpine World Ski Championships.

By Daphne Seberich

After the 2021 Cortina d’Ampezzo FIS Alpine Ski World Championships, the World Cup restarted on a new slope for the women in Val di Fassa, Italy. The Passo San Pellegrino course, which hosted the 2019 FIS Alpine Junior World Championships, was a replacement for the Olympic Test events in Beijing, which were canceled due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, the Italian venue proved to be especially fitting to one particular athlete’s characteristics: Lara Gut-Behrami.

The Swiss athlete scored two gold medals (Super G and Giant Slalom) and one bronze in the Downhill event at the Cortina World Championships. The Ticino skier has been virtually untouchable since the beginning of 2021, especially in Super G, at which she won at four out of five events during the season.

Today’s Dowhill event was not an easy win for Gut-Behrami, as she barely surpassed Ramona Siebehofer for the lead. Two-hundredths of a second were enough to assign the victory to the Swiss racer. Placing third was Cortina Downhill World Champion, Corinne Suter who was just 26 hundredths off teammate Lara Gut-Behrami’s pace.

Breezy Johnson, who scored four third places in five World Cup Downhill races, was the athlete kicking-off the race. The time to beat for the competitors was 1:24.77. Austrian Ramona Siebenhofer seemed to race cleaner lines, which helped her increase her advantage over Johnson intermediate by intermediate. With 34 hundredths of advantage, Siebenhofer dethroned the American skier. Cortina World Championships Downhill silver medalist Kira Weidle managed to squeeze between the two racers after her attempt, finishing in second place.

Francesca Marsaglia’s performance was not at her level. The athlete competing on home soil was expecting a better result, but 1.72 seconds from the provisional leader only secured her fourth place.

The new 2021 Downhill World Champion Corinne Suter seemed not capable of interpreting the slope the best way to deserve the lead of the race. 24-hundredths of delay behind Siebenhofer still secured the provisional second spot on the podium.

Speed discipline superstar Lara Gut-Behrami was racing for the Overall World Cup title. The Swiss was always close to Siebenhofer’s time throughout the intermediates. It was a breathtaking finish, as Gut-Behrami managed to recover over 16 hundredths of a second of delay, finishing 0.02 seconds ahead of the provisional leader.

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Former Downhill World Champion Ilka Stuhec, who complained ahead of the race about the easiness of difficulty of the Italian slope, was doing well ahead of the first intermediate. A mistake, although, ended her chances of winning.

Giant Slalom dominator Marta Bassino was setting the worst intermediates of all the athletes. The Italian superstar seemed not to be in her best mental shape after the criticism she encountered following the Cortina Giant Slalom flop. A 2.18-second disadvantage placed her in last. On the contrary, teammate Laura Pirovano, who placed seventh after her run, was the best-placed “Azzurra” of the competition on home soil.

Petra Vlhova, Gut-Behrami’s main challenger for the Overall title, was doing well in the first half of the race. Keeping up with Lara Gut-Behrami is never an easy task and being 1.12 seconds behind the Downhill giant was already an impressive accomplishment for the Slovakian.

Thanks to this victory, Lara Gut-Behrami took over the leadership of the Overall standings, with over a 29-points lead over Vlhova, whose ninth-place was not enough to keep her in the lead.

Photo credits: Alessandro Trovati for AP Photo

As far as the Downhill standings concern, Sofia Goggia maintains the leadership over the standings, even though her injury prevents her from competing. The Italian skier was dominating the Downhill season when a fatal mistake in Garmisch-Partenkirchen’s Super G cut her winning streak short. It also prevented her from participating at the World Championships on home soil, where she would have undoubtedly scored a good result.

The races at the Passo San Pellegrino will continue with another Downhill race on Saturday and a Super G on Sunday, with Lara Gut-Behrami as a favorite to win them all. As the season comes to an end, the race to earn the Crystal Globes becomes tighter and even more exciting for the viewers. Who will come out on top?

Photo credits: Race Ski Magazine & Eurosport

Walliser’s 32-year-record was finally crushed by Suter!

Switzerland’s Corinne Suter brings back the Downhill World Championships gold medal to the Swiss Ski team 32 years after their last successful racer, Maria Walliser.

By Daphne Seberich

After tough weather days at the start of the Championships week, Cortina dished up a dream day for the women’s downhillers. Cloudless blue skies and crisp temperatures greeted the field as one of the most scenic downhill courses in the world, had a chance to truly shine for the Women’s Downhill FIS Alpine World Ski Championship race.

The Swiss women continued their march through Cortina, earning another two speed medals thanks to, once again, the work of Corinne Suter and Lara Gut-Behrami. Today it was Suter’s turn to shine as she claimed her first career World Championship gold medal.

Corinne Suter became the first Swiss skier to win the Women’s Downhill FIS Alpine World Ski Championships title in 32 years (Maria Walliser was the last Swiss world champion in women’s downhill) with the victory at Cortina d’Ampezzo. The 2021 Super-G silver medalist dominated the Olympia delle Tofane piste, built for the 1956 Winter Olympics, to win her second medal of the 2021 Alpine World Ski Championships in cold and clear conditions.

That triumph made her only the second woman ever to win a medal in both downhill and Super-G at two separate World Championships, having also achieved the feat in 2019; American Lindsey Vonn (2007, 2009) is the only other skier to have done so.

Germany’s Kira Weidle took silver, while Suter’s teammate and pre-race favorite Lara Gut-Behrami, the Super-G event winner, won bronze. Two-time defending champion Ilka Stuhec of Slovenia could only finish 14th.

Photo credits: DE 24 News, Olympic Channel & Pentaphoto

To kick it off, Francesca Marsaglia was the first to challenge the Olympia delle Tofane slope. With a time of 1:35.81, she set the bar for the other competitors. Swiss racer Jasmina Suter and Italian teammate Laura Pirovano attempted to dethrone Marsaglia from provisional first place. Only Pirovano managed to beat her teammate’s time, serving her a 37 hundredths of a second advantage at the finish line. Nadia Delago with bib number 4 squeezed in-between Pirovano and Marsaglia to secure an all-Italian podium on home soil.

Although her run was characterized by many mistakes, Breezy Johnson ended the Italian dominance by beating the leader’s time by 27 hundredths of a second.

Åre 2019 Downhill and Cortina 2021 Super G silver medal winner Corinne Suter set green intermediates throughout her run, ending it 9 tenths ahead of Johnson. Swiss teammate Michelle Gisin earned the provisional runner-up podium spot, 5 tenths behind Suter but was shortly after beaten by Czech Ledecká by 6 hundredths of a second.

German skier Kira Weidle came the closest to dethroning Suter but didn’t quite manage to get the top spot, crossing the finish line 2 tenths behind the Swiss athlete.

After winning her maiden gold medal on Thursday in the Super G event, Lara Gut-Behrami had a really strong performance, setting green intermediates throughout her run. Unfortunately, she didn’t quite manage to dethrone her teammate but still earned a spot on the podium with a 37 hundredths of a second delay.

Ilka Stuhec, who won the Downhill gold medal in the World Championships in 2017 and 2019, could not do anything against Corinne Suter’s superiority, having to hand over her the World Championship title.

The last Italian to compete on the Olympia delle Tofane slope was Elena Curtoni. It was a very close fight for a podium position, but the way she skied the last section of the slope was not good enough for a podium position. She ended up crossing the finish line 83 hundredths behind Suter.

“My run was really good, I did what I wanted to ski, what I needed to give me the space and take the speed with me,” Suter told FIS. She added that her Super-G silver medal gave her confidence: “More than I first thought, I always knew in downhill I had more chances and then I started with a silver medal in Super-G. “Today was a new day, I felt really good in the morning, and I knew I did everything I could.”

Weidle was 0.2 seconds behind in second, having looked like potentially threatening Suter for gold. “It’s still kind of unbelievable, I’m just happy,” Weidle told Eurosport after the race. “I was hoping for a medal, it was my biggest goal today. While I was racing I really felt good, no big mistakes. I knew I could be fast, Corinne was just faster.”

Thanks to the exploits of Gut-Behrami and Suter, Switzerland holds a strong lead in the overall medal count with four in total. While the Swiss men were shut out of the medals in the Super-G event, they have several favorites for the Downhill event that can help to build on the lead.