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rsederquist@vaildaily.com
Cornelia Hütter, Lara Gut-Behrami and Sofia Goggia went 1-2-3, but all eyes were on the 40-year-old American wearing bib 31 at Saturday’s super-G in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Lindsey Vonn placed 14th in her return to the World Cup after a five-year hiatus, finishing 1.18 seconds off Hütter’s winning time of 1 minute, 15.18 seconds.
“Today was the perfect start. I had a solid run, got to the finish,” Vonn told FIS. “The first one is the hardest. I felt really good.”
Vonn returned to racing with a pair of FIS competitions at Copper Mountain earlier this month before acting as forerunner during the Birds of Prey weekend in Beaver Creek. Prior to Saturday, her last World Cup race was a DNF in the super-G in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Jan 20, 2019. She took bronze in the 2019 downhill world championships, her final professional race. Vonn’s last World Cup podium came in Are, Sweden on March 15, 2018 and her last win was in the downhill the day before.
On Saturday, Vonn was slow out of the gate, losing 0.52 seconds in posting just the 56th-fastest first sector. Her second and fourth splits, however, were the fourth and fifth best in the field, respectively.
“The course was a little bit bumpy when I went, so in some sections I was a little more conservative with my lines,” she said. “But in some sections, I was really fast. There’s definitely a lot that I have left to give; I just wanted to get to the finish today and be solid.”
The four-time Olympian said she was “a little bit stressed” prior to her 396th-career World Cup start.
“I was a little bit behind. I forgot a couple of things. It was hectic, I just hadn’t done it in a while,” Vonn said. “But it was nice to feel the nerves again. When I’m on the starting gate, I don’t see anything else but the gates in front of me. It feels so good to have the nerves and to have the butterflies, the adrenaline to push yourself.”
Lauren Macuga led the Americans with a seventh-place finish, her fifth top-10 after placing fourth in the downhill in Beaver Creek last weekend.
Hütter picked up her second win of the season — she won the downhill at Beaver Creek on Dec. 14 — and became the first Austrian since Michaela Dorfmeister in 2006 to win the super-G in St. Moritz.
“Today was a really historic race. To hear that statistic is nice, for sure,” Hütter told FIS after claiming her eighth-career World Cup win. The defending downhill crystal globe winner passed Mikaela Shiffrin to move into second in the overall standings.
“After inspection, I thought it would be a little bit easier,” she said. “But then when I skied down, I was thinking ‘Oh my god, it’s not that easy.’ That was also my feeling through the run. It’s really tricky, the gates are coming so fast.”
Hütter blitzed the final two sectors to move past Lara Gut-Behrami, whose mistake in the middle of the course cost her serious speed in the final segment.
“I did a few mistakes today, which cost me a lot,” Gut-Behrami, who owns five super-G crystal globes, told FIS. “But in the end, I’m just happy I’m skiing well and (that I) found my confidence back. I hope tomorrow I can come to the finish line without making mistakes.”
Goggia, who won the season-opening super-G in Beaver Creek on Dec. 15 in her first weekend of racing coming back from a leg injury, finished third, 0.18 off Gut-Behrami and 0.33 back from Hütter.
“It was not a super nice run, but also not a bad one,” Goggia told FIS. “I didn’t ski so fluid as last week. But in the end, it was not so bad.”
The action in St. Moritz continues with a downhill on Sunday. Forty-three of Vonn’s 82 World Cup wins have come in the discipline.
“I always feel it’s just me against the mountain,” Vonn said. “I love that feeling. Tomorrow will be better now that I’m used to it.”
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