The Alpine Skiing World Cup continues this weekend with women's speed races in Altenmarkt-Zauchensee and men's technical races in Adelboden. A women's sprint downhill took place on Saturday in Zauchensee while the men's giant slalom in Adelboden had to be canceled due to rain and fog.
The women's downhill used the sprint format; it was run over two runs on a shortened course with a single run lasting just over a minute instead of almost two minutes as usual.
USA's Lindsey Vonn set by far the quickest time of the first run. Closest to her came the Canadian Larisa Yurkiw, losing 0.91 seconds. Also the third-placed Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein (+0.92) and the fourth-placed Cornelia Hütter (+0.98) came within a second from Vonn.
The overall World Cup leader Lara Gut of Switzerland failed to finish the race as she missed a gate on the first run. Although her lead was big enough to remain in the World Cup lead after the race anyway, scoring no points was still a huge blow for her campaign.
The first run got interrupted when Norway's Lotte Smiseth Sejersted fell and crashed into the nets at the same place where Gut ran out. Although Sejersted could move herself after the crash, she injured herself and had to be airlifted from the slope.
Nobody was able to catch Lindsey Vonn on the second run. Vonn won the race by exactly one second over Larisa Yurkiw. Cornelia Hütter finished in third place, 1.66 seconds from Vonn, while the first run's third, Tina Weirather, ran out at the same place where Gut, Sejersted, and many other racers went out.
The top six was completed by Kajsa Kling of Sweden in fourth place (+2.05), Nicole Schmidhofer of Austria in fifth place (+2.11), and Viktoria Rebensburg of Germany in sixth place (+2.53).
With the 36th career downhill win, Lindsey Vonn equaled the retired Austrian Annemarie Moser-Pröll's record of most World Cup downhill race wins in either gender.
Lindsey Vonn leads now the downhill World Cup standings by 50 points to Cornelia Hütter. Fabienne Suter of Switzerland tied the lead with Vonn before Zauchensee, yet she missed the race after suffering a pulled hamstring in training past week. She is now third in the downhill standings, 100 points behind the leader Vonn and two points ahead of the fourth-placed Larisa Yurkiw.
The result also means that Lindsey Vonn climbed to second place in the overall World Cup, past the Swedish technical specialist Frida Hansdotter. With the 100 points of the win to Vonn and no points to the standings leader Lara Gut, Vonn reduced the gap to 58 points.
The Alpine Skiing World Cup continues on Sunday with a women's super-G in Altenmarkt-Zauchensee and a men's slalom in Adelboden.