Cornelia Hütter is on the verge of her seventh World Cup victory. The Austrian leads in the first downhill run of the season in Beaver Creek after 30 riders started ahead of the Italian Sofia Goggia.
The best Swiss downhill skier in the intermediate ranking is Lara Gut-Behrami in third place.
Robert F. Bukaty / AP
(sda) The best Swiss downhill skier in the intermediate ranking is Lara Gut-Behrami in third place. Things hadn’t gone as planned for last winter’s overall World Cup winner this season. She had to miss the start of the giant slalom in Sölden at short notice; in Killington she only finished in 13th place.
But on the “Birds of Prey”, where the men also competed a week ago and the Swiss downhill skiers celebrated a double success with Justin Murisier ahead of Marco Odermatt, the 33-year-old from Ticino had announced her ambitions for a top placement with training ranks 2, 1 and 4 .
Gut-Behrami lost 0.34 seconds to the Styrian Hütter, who was one year younger and had snatched the small crystal ball from her for winning the downhill discipline at the World Cup final in Saalbach last season.
Goggia suffered a fracture of his tibia and tibial malleolus in a training fall at the beginning of February 2024. A good ten months later, she was back on the attack again during her comeback, sometimes with extreme corners. The Italian missed her 25th World Cup victory by just 16 hundredths.
With Michelle Gisin, another Swiss woman is in the top 10 in Colorado. The Obwalden native, who had never finished better than 19th in five World Cup races this winter, surprised with 7th place.
Swiss
