Julia Mancuso ended her five-year drought in the Super-G with victory in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Sunday.
American clinches first giant slalom win since 2007
Julia Mancuso ended her five year drought in the Super-G with victory in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Sunday.
The American was the only skier to fully tame the tricky Kandahar 2 course, winning in a time of 1 minute and 20.5 seconds.
Second place went to Austria's Anna Fenninger, 0.13 behind Mancuso, while Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein was third 0.45 behind the winner.
The win, Mancuso's sixth World Cup victory and her first in a Super-G since 2007 came as little surprise to the American, who was silver-medallist at the world championships on the same piste a year ago.
"I discovered last year that is was a tough course, on which you need guts," said the 2006 giant slalom Olympic champion.
"And that's what I like. The harder it is, the better I feel. The way I'm skiing at the moment I had a feeling I would not leave Garmsich empty-handed."
Mistake
Mancuso's compatriot, favourite Lindsey Vonn failed to finish after the overall World Cup leader made a rare mistake, losing her balance halfway down and missing a gate.
"I'm so unused to it that I didn't know what to do or where to go," said the 27-year-old who won Saturday's downhill," I'm not sad or disappointed.
"I have a right to go wrong from time to time. I could feel it coming because yesterday, I found myself on my bottom a couple of times.
Vonn's closest rival in the overall World Cup, Slovenian Tina Maze on 868 points, also failed to complete the course.
A three-times winner of the overall crystal globe, Vonn , who has 1,350 points, said she was looking forward to next week's races in Soldeu with another goal in mind.
"I'm third in the giant slalom World Cup and I've never been in that position before," she said.
"I'm going there to win as the giant slalom World Cup is now a real goal. It would be another dream to achieve
Challenge
Romed Baumann held off a strong challenge from Alexis Pinturault to win Sunday's World Cup super-combined race in emphatic style
Baumann led Pinturault by a comfortable 3.27 seconds after posting the fastest time in the morning's downhill run on the La Verte des Houches course,
And the Austrian held firm in the afternoon slalom session to beat the promising Frenchman by 1.10 seconds and seal his second career victory.
The 26-year-old's only previous World Cup win was also in a supercombi race three years ago in Sestriere, Italy.
Switzerland's Beat Feuz, tied for fifth after the downhill, was 1:19 behind Baumann in third place - his third supercombi podium so far this season.
"I'm so happy because I've had to wait for so long," said Baumann. "At every single race this weekend I've been so close to victory. It's finally happened."
"When I finished and looked at the podium and saw it was green (that he had won). Then I looked more closely and saw that my margin was more than one second,
"It's definitely special. It's true that I had a big lead but I'm still proud of the slalom I produced to win by such a big margin."
