Double Swiss delight as Odermatt, Gut-Behrami claim super-G globes / Photo: Joe Klamar - AFP
Double Swiss delight as Odermatt, Gut-Behrami claim super-G globes
There was double Swiss super-G delight at the World Cup finals in Saalbach on Friday as both Marco Odermatt and Lara Gut-Behrami finished atop the speed discipline's standings.
Odermatt had come to the Austrian resort confirmed of the big globe for a third time after having topped the overall standings, while Gut-Behrami claimed her second on Sunday.
Odermatt was up against Austrian speed rival Vincent Kriechmayr in the super-G standings, and the Swiss racer finished fifth down the Ulli Maier piste.
The globe went his way as Kriechmayr came in sixth, 0.08sec off Odermatt's pace.
After bagging the overall, super-G and giant slalom globes, Odermatt will now try to mirror Austrian Hermann Maier's feat from 23 years ago of also bagging the downhill globe.
Odermatt is currently 42 points ahead of France's Cyprien Sarrazin in those standings, with 100pts on offer for victory and a decreasing points value for lesser positions.
The super-G race itself went the way of Odermatt's teammate Stefan Rogentin, whose maiden World Cup win came in 1min 13.36sec.
Rogentin led home a Swiss podium sweep with Loic Meillard and Arnaud Boisset claiming second and third places.
World champion James Crawford of Canada could only finish 14th.
Earlier in the day, Ester Ledecka, the Czech snowboarder turned speedster, won the women's super-G.
Ledecka, who famously won the super-G alpine skiing gold and the parallel giant slalom in snowboarding at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, clocked 1:15.94 for victory in brilliant sunshine.
It was the multi-talented 28-year-old's fourth victory on the World Cup circuit.
Italy's Federica Brignone came in second, at 0.28sec, while Norway's Kajsa Vickhoff Lie rounded out the podium, a further two-hundredths of a second adrift.
Gut-Behrami finished seventh, a position that confirmed her as World Cup super-G winner in the discipline standings, 30 points ahead of Brignone.
The 32-year-old Swiss skier had claimed her second overall title on Sunday despite only finishing 10th in the season-closing giant slalom.
With that result the Olympic super-G gold medallist took an unassailable lead into the final two races of the World Cup season -- the super-G and Saturday's downhill -- as well as claiming her first giant slalom title.
Gut-Behrami heads into the downhill atop the discipline standings, 19pts ahead of the injured Italian Soffia Goggia, and locked in a straight battle for a fourth globe of the season with the Austrian pair of Stephanie Venier and Cornelia Huetter, and Swiss teammate Jamsine Flury.
The men wrap up the finals with their own downhill on Sunday.
Ch.McDonald--EWJ
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