SANTA CATERINA, 20:00, 04.02.2005. Italy (AFP) - Croatia's triple Olympic champion Janica Kostelic successfully defended her combined title here at the world ski championships after a flawless display in the second slalom.

Kostelic, 23, won the women's downhill section of the two-discipline event in the morning to take a slim lead into the two slaloms ahead of Sweden's Anja Paerson.

The Croatian crack held on in the second slalom, posting a suberb combined time of 2min 53.70sec to claim her first gold of the championships and leave Paerson down in second place.

Paerson posted a combined time of 2:55.15, which was over a second ahead of Austrian Marlies Schild who took the bronze medal after edging out American Lindsey Kildow by a whisker.

Kostelic, who is the reigning Olympic combined champion, took a lead of just 0.66sec over Paerson after the downhill section of the combined.

After the first slalom she was still in the lead, although her lead of 0.66 had dropped to 0.37 as Paerson upped the pace on what used to be her favourite discipline.

Paerson was second last to start from the remaining field of 22 in the second slalom, but despite a valiant effort, Kostelic improved on her first slalom display to secure the gold.

"I wasn't too happy with my first slalom but my second was much better," said Kostelic, who is likely to cross swords with Paerson again in the slalom and giant slalom.

Paerson, the reigning overall World Cup champion, thus picks up her second medal of the competition.

The Swedish sensation stunned a handful of favourites to win the women's super-G last Sunday, where Kostelic did not participate.

Austrian ace Renate Gotschl, who came third in Friday's downhill section at only 0.70sec behind Kostelic, fell out of contention after starting her first slalom run too fast and losing momentum less than half way down.

Kildow, a bronze medal winner in last week's super-G, had tied with Gotschl for third place in the downhill, but despite retaining her medal chances after the first slalom the 20-year-old American was pipped by Schild.

Schild will perhaps be celebrating for the second night in a row. On Thursday, her boyfriend Benjamin Raich won gold for Austria in the men's combined title to claim his first ever world title.