The Women’s Alpine Skiing World Cup continued after Christmas with a giant slalom and a slalom in Lienz, Austria, and a slalom in Santa Caterina, Italy.

Giant Slalom in Lienz

The overall World Cup leader Lara Gut of Switzerland achieved her third win in four races in the Lienz giant slalom. She also claimed the giant slalom World Cup lead as the previous leader Eva-Maria Brem of Austria finished only fourth. Gut’s lead to now second-placed Brem is eight points.

Liechtenstein’s Tina Weirather and Germany’s Viktoria Rebensburg achieved their best results of the season, finishing second and third respectively.

Italy’s Federica Brignone, the GS World Cup leader until the Courchevel race, finished fifth in Lienz. She is now third in the GS standings, trailing the leader Gut by 85 points.

The Lienz GS had a surprise leader after the first run. Slovenia’s Ana Drev had the quickest first run; however she crashed out early on the second run.

Lara Gut’s main rival in the overall World Cup, Lindsey Vonn of the USA, scored no points in Lienz. She showed competitive pace in the first split of the first run, however she missed a gate after that and thus couldn’t finish the run. She is trailing Gut by 158 points in the overall standings.

Slaloms in Lienz and Santa Caterina

The slalom World Cup leader Frida Hansdotter of Sweden increased her lead by winning the slalom in Lienz in a tight victory battle against Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener. Hansdotter’s lead was just 0.11 seconds after the first run, and reduced to only 0.07 seconds after the second run.

The junior World Champion Petra Vlhová of Slovakia finished third in Lienz. With that result, she claimed the slalom standings’ second place from the injured Mikaela Shiffrin of the USA.

The slalom in Santa Caterina was dominated by Nina Løseth. The 26-year-old Norwegian set the quickest times of both runs to score her maiden win, also the first win by a Norwegian woman in over 13 years.

Frida Hansdotter couldn’t continue her podium streak in this season’s slalom races, finishing fifth in Santa Caterina. However, she remains as the slalom World Cup leader.

Second in the standings before Santa Caterina, Petra Vlhová didn’t finish the first run and had to give up two positions in the points standings. Šárka Strachová of the Czech Republic finished second and is second also in the slalom World Cup, 94 points behind Hansdotter. Veronika Velez-Zuzulová of Slovakia progressed from the first run’s 13th place to third in the final results, which is also her position in the slalom points, 145 points behind Hansdotter.

With the win and the fifth place, Frida Hansdotter went to second place between Lara Gut and Lindsey Vonn in the overall World Cup, 137 points from the leader Gut. However, Vonn seems like Gut’s main rival as the remaining schedule favors speed specialists more than technical specialists.

Next: Sprint downhill and super-G in Zauchensee

Photo: Skigebiet Zauchensee

The women’s season continues next weekend with the season’s fourth downhill on Saturday and the second super-G on Sunday. The races were originally scheduled to the Austrian resort of St. Anton, however there wasn’t enough snow there and the races had to be moved to another Austrian resort, Zauchensee. Lack of snow has affected to the race program also in Zauchensee; the downhill has to be run as a sprint downhill with two runs on a shortened course.

The defending downhill and super-G World Cup champion Lindsey Vonn dominated the season’s first speed races in Lake Louise and is surely the biggest favorite also in Zauchensee. However, in the last downhill race in Val d’Isère, she ran out of the course, just avoiding a heavy crash. She hurt her knee in the incident, yet suffered nothing serious.

The overall World Cup leader Lara Gut found her downhill form in Val d’Isère, winning the downhill racing and finishing second in the downhill leg of alpine combined. However, beating Vonn is a big task for Vonn.

Gut’s countrywoman Fabienne Suter has started her season strongly in downhill. With two second places and a sixth place, she is at 200 points and shares the downhill World Cup lead with Vonn. Her start to the super-G season wasn’t as good; she finished only 20th in the Lake Louise super-G.

Cornelia Hütter has had a good early season, finishing inside the top four in all this season’s speed races so far and is in third place in both speed disciplines’ points. The 23-year-old Austrian has a good chance of scoring her first win this season.

Given her two podium finishes despite the reputation of a speed specialist, Tina Weirather’s performances in this season’s speed races have been disappointing; she is only ninth in downhill and tenth in super-G standings. Fifth place in the last downhill in Val d’Isère was her best speed result of the season so far, so she may be finding her form. Still, the gap of 344 points to the overall leader Gut is going to be very difficult to catch, especially given Gut’s great form.