The Swiss, who was only in ninth place at halftime, made the decisive improvement in the final on Saturday. In the end she was just a hundredth of a second ahead of New Zealand’s Alice Robinson, with AJ Hurt from the USA coming third (+0.15 seconds). Ricarda Haaser was the best ÖSV in eighth place, Julia Scheib was 13th.
For Gut-Behrami it was the 43rd World Cup victory and the sixth this season. In the all-time best list, she left the Swede Anja Pärson behind and is the only sixth. Styrian Renate Götschl is in fifth place with 46 wins. “I missed the start and was shaking at the finish,” said Gut-Behrami in an ORF interview. “It was a cool second run. I accelerated, in the first I was always a bit too round.” However, due to a serious mistake in the lower part, she didn’t think that it might be enough to win.
5 points ahead of Shiffrin
In the overall standings, Gut-Behrami is now five points ahead of Shiffrin, who is missing due to a knee injury. The American injured her medial ligament two weeks ago when she fell on the Cortina d’Ampezzo descent. It is unclear when she will intervene once more. In the discipline ranking, Gut-Behrami extended her lead over Federica Brignone to 135 points.
The 32-year-old has won the big crystal ball once so far, that was in the 2015/2016 season. “Sure, it’s an honor for me and it’s also nice that I have the opportunity to take part and keep up with the best,” emphasized Gut-Behrami. She didn’t really want to go into the topic. “That’s still a month early.”
Haaser improved with a good second run, in which she was even faster than Gut-Behrami and set the fastest time. “It was great skiing. I missed the race in the first round,” said the Tyrolean, who was 0.51 seconds behind the winner overall. “The material was just very, very aggressive, so I changed that in the second round. When I feel a little more confident, I can accelerate and use the skiing that I’m really capable of.” In the Bansko giant slalom on Saturday, her brother Raphael also achieved the best time in the second round and came 20th.
Scheib fell back
On the undulating, bumpy slope, Scheib, like several others, suffered problems in the final and fell three places down from tenth place. “I’m really extremely disappointed. It was okay at the top, but I left a bit too much space off the line at times. And it was just a real struggle at the bottom,” explained the Styrian. “The place is okay. These are important points so that I have a good starting number. It’s not that bad today. But of course, the gap wasn’t that big following the first one. That’s when you know with a good second run you’re fully involved.”
Stephanie Brunner had to be content with 23rd place, Katharina Liensberger was 24th and Franziska Gritsch 27th. Katharinarupp did not make it to the second round in 35th place, Elisabeth Kappaurer, Elisa Mörzinger and Lisa Hörhager were eliminated.
