ALPINE SKI. Austria – The tricky, turny race course in Bad Kleinkirchheim is called “Kaernten-Klammer” after local ski hero Franz Klammer, but if it were to take on yet another name this weekend, it might be Fabienne Suter.

Fabienne Suter of Switzerland takes 1st place during the Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup Women's SuperG on January 8, 2012 in Bad Kleinkirchheim, Austria. (January 7, 2012 - Photo by Christophe Pallot/Agence Zoom/Getty Images Europe)

Following her third place finish in Saturday’s downhill, the Swiss racer who just celebrated her 27th birthday landed her first victory in nearly three years in the super G on Sunday.

Suter won with a finish time of 1 minute, 9.89 seconds. After landing on three slalom podiums so far this season, Tina Maze is back into her stride on the longer skis and took second on Sunday, 0.34 seconds behind Suter as Anna Fenninger kept the lively energy of the home crowd surging, rounding out the podium, 0.74 seconds back.

Elisabeth Goergl of Austria in action during the Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup Women's SuperG on January 8, 2012 in Bad Kleinkirchheim, Austria. (January 7, 2012 - Photo by Christophe Pallot/Agence Zoom/Getty Images Europe)

As a team, however, it was the Swiss who collectively dominated the BKK super G slope with four racers in the top seven and all finishing within a second of Suter. Fraenzi Aufdenblatten, who was on the podium in BKK when the women’s World Cup tour last stopped here six years ago, was fourth, 0.78 off the winning time, Lara Gut was fifth, 0.88 seconds back and Dominique Gisin was seventh, 0.97 seconds back.

“I’m very happy about these two days,” Suter said. “To be first … it is just nice to be one day the fastest [of] all. I enjoy this feeling. The whole team in super G, we had also a good result in Beaver Creek and now it goes on here. In the summer we had good training and I think we are ready.”

Indeed, when Suter took second in Beaver Creek, three of her teammates (Martina Schild, Aufdenblatten and Gisin) were also in the top seven. But Suter’s mastery of the Bad Kleinkirchheim course, which is shaded, off-camber, steep and was rock solid after a few fresh centimeters of snow were cleared off of it Sunday, was reminiscent of her three consecutive days of success in Bansko in 2009. It was there that she won the first downhill race of her World Cup career, then was third in the following day’s downhill and second in the super G the day after that.

“Sometime it works and you really don’t know why,” Suter said after the race Sunday. “At the moment everything is good – the skis, my technique … yesterday and in Beaver, I felt I can be fast, I felt I can be on top of the world. Now today, it is so nice to know I was the fastest [of] all the athletes.”

Maze was also happy to be back on her game on the speed track. Slalom has been the Slovenian all-rounder’s best discipline so far this season but before Sunday, the last time she was on a super G podium was when she took the silver medal in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

Following her 10th-place finish in the BKK downhill on Saturday, Fenninger was also very pleased with her performance in the super G.

“It was very difficult today for me. Yesterday was a hard day,” said the Austrian, who took her first World Cup victory a few days ago in the Lienz giant slalom and also podiumed in the Beaver Creek and Lake Louise SG races this season. “The focus today was for good skiing, not for a result. So I’m very satisfied. I’m proud to be on the podium at home again. It was a good run. I was in the start and I really knew what to do, so for me it was really clear. I risked a lot. I was fast at the top. For me the difficult part was the finish, there is the last compress. You have to go around there, if you are too straight, the compress was really hard and you lost speed.”

The compression area was where many of the favorites going into the race Sunday scrubbed their speed. This included Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso, both of whom had strong leads at the top of the course but, without making any stark mistakes, dropped speed in this middle section and couldn’t recover it around the last winding turns to the finish.

“It’s about adapting down the course,” said Mancuso, whose coach set Sunday’s course and who was third in Saturday’s DH. “It’s just hard when you’re expecting a plan and then to change your plan halfway through the run. There’s a lot of terrain changes here. You definitely can’t lose your speed because there’s not many places to get it back. As a team, we probably over-inspected.”

Mancuso ended up a respectable eighth place, 1.01 seconds off the pace, but four-time World Cup super G champion Vonn, who won both of the other SGs this season in Beaver Creek and Lake Loiuse, fell to 18th Sunday, the worst result of super G races she has finished since her performance here in Bad Kleinkirchheim in 2006. Vonn has had the flu for several days and hopes to be back on her game next weekend in Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Lindsey Vonn of the USA in action during the Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup Women's SuperG on January 8, 2012 in Bad Kleinkirchheim, Austria. (January 7, 2012 - Photo by Christophe Pallot/Agence Zoom/Getty Images Europe)

“I didn’t have the self-confidence, I didn’t have the power I normally have,” Vonn said. “I’m still not myself. I’m just going to try to rest up the next couple of days and try to get my form back for the next races.”

FISalpine.com
Sunday 8 January 2012

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