LA THUILE, Italy (AP) — Federica Brignone all but locked up the women’s overall World Cup title by winning a super-G on Friday, giving the Italian a near-insurmountable lead in the season standings.
Brignone extended her advantage over her only remaining challenger, defending champion Lara Gut-Behrami, to 382 points with four races left at the World Cup finals in Sun Valley, Idaho.
A race win is worth 100 points, but Gut-Behrami usually doesn’t compete in slalom. Skipping that event at the finals would leave the Swiss standout with only three races, not enough to be able to close the gap.
“It’s crazy, and doing it here, at home, it’s even more crazy,” Brignone said after winning the race close to her Italian hometown in the Aosta Valley.
Brignone previously won the big crystal globe in 2020, when she overtook five-time champion Mikaela Shiffrin on top of the standings in the final weeks of the season when the American took a break from racing after the death of her father.
“I wanted to redo it, and retry it. It was one of my dreams as a kid,” Brignone said.
Smallest margin possible
On Friday, Brignone edged her teammate Sofia Goggia for victory in the penultimate super-G of the season.
“I wanted it so much, to see the green light in front of my people here,” Brignone said. “It’s just crazy, it’s really something really, really big.”
Brignone won by the smallest margin possible after Goggia led throughout her run but lost a tenth of second in the final section to finish 0.01 behind.
Romane Miradoli came 0.05 behind in third for the French skier’s first podium result in more than a year.
Gut-Behrami shared the fourth place with her Swiss teammate Corinne Suter, both trailing Brignone by 0.35 seconds.
The result set up a tense battle for the super-G season title, with Brignone now five points ahead of Gut-Behrami, with only the March 23 race at the finals remaining.
Emma Aicher, who won Thursday’s super-G, seemed on course to repeat that triumph but the German prodigy skied out of the course halfway through her run when she was leading Brignone by nearly three-tenths of a second.
Lindsey Vonn was the best American finisher in 13th, a day after she fell and slid through a gate early in Thursday’s race but remained unhurt.
Her teammate Lauren Macuga, the bronze medalist from last month’s world championships, was 19th.
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/alpine-skiing
The Associated Press
