The Olympic champion from Italy won her World Cup comeback race in Lake Louise on Friday in her specialty discipline by a massive 1.47 seconds ahead of the American Breezy Johnson and 1.54 seconds ahead of Mirjam Puchner, who was third on the first Austrian women’s podium of the season . Ramona Siebenhofer (+1.96) just missed the podium in fourth.
The first of nine planned seasonal runs for women took place after two changeable days with rain and perfect weather. And after only one training session, because another two planned units had fallen victim to the weather. The terrain waves that had been postponed for the men a week earlier had been milled away again.
The winner was already clear after runner number five. After setting the best time in training, Goggia left nothing to burn on her comeback descent and crossed the finish line with such a huge margin that no competitor came even close. Goggia’s first downhill win in Lake Louise was her twelfth overall and ninth in the downhill. In her six most recent runs, the 29-year-old has now made it onto the podium every time.
The Italian was taken out of the competition last January before her home World Cup in Cortina d’Ampezzo due to a fracture of a tibia head. Before that, however, she had dominated the downhill to such an extent that the crystal ball for the discipline victory could no longer be taken from her. Only at the start of the season in October in Sölden did Goggia return to the race track in the giant slalom.
The conditions on the first day of the race in the Canadian Rockies were so good at minus 16 degrees that Goggia’s winning time was five seconds faster than her best time on Wednesday – albeit with peat errors. That was also good for the comeback of Nicole Schmidhofer, who was at the start of a race in Banff National Park for the first time after a long injury break.
Schmidhofer took care of the last downhill victory of the ÖSV women two years ago in Lake Louise, but then got seriously injured last season. “Welcome back” called Goggia to the visibly relieved Styrian at the finish. “It was cool to drive. I don’t have much more to it at the moment,” said Schmidhofer in view of the 4.62 seconds gap. “It was still a good step forward.”
Behind Puchner (3rd) and Siebenhofer (4th), Cornelia Hütter also made a successful downhill comeback as a strong seventh. The Styrian even won here after an injury comeback in 2017. On Saturday (8.30 p.m. CET) there will be another downhill run for women alpine skiing on the Olympic slope in Canada. On Sunday (6:30 p.m.) there will be a Super-G at the end.
Source: Nachrichten
