The two Swiss women shine despite unfavorable circumstances. The Austrian Cornelia Hütter placed third.
Sickly to victory: The Swiss Jasmine Flury.
Giovanni Auletta / AP
(sda) Jasmine Flury and Joana Hählen pull off an exploit in the World Cup downhill in Val d’Isère. The Swiss celebrate a double victory ahead of the Austrian Cornelia Hütter. The Italian speed queen Sofia Goggia has to settle for fourth place.
Flury won with a margin of 22 and 24 hundredths respectively over her first pursuers. The Italian dominator Sofia Goggia, who has won five of the last ten downhill runs and was second four times, came fourth, 44 hundredths behind. Mikaela Shiffrin, the winner of the first downhill run of the winter in St. Moritz, decided not to start.
Gut-Behrami in 11th place
The second best Swiss woman was Priska Nufer in 6th place. Corinne Suter and Lara Gut-Behrami took 9th and 11th place. Delia Durrer followed four positions behind Gut-Behrami, who lacked the willingness to take risks on the harder slope. Six Swiss women were ranked in the top 15. Nufer, the surprise winner in Crans-Montana in 2022, equaled her third-best World Cup result. Michelle Gisin came twentieth.
For the downhill world champion Flury, it is the second World Cup victory six years after her triumph in the Super-G in St. Moritz. The last Swiss double victory among women dates back to January 2022, when Corinne Suter won the downhill ahead of Flury in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Hählen had previously made it onto the podium four times in the World Cup.
Coughing into the race
Flury and Hählen excelled despite the unfavorable omens: Flury has been sick for several days, and the cough in particular is still bothering her. In addition, the 30-year-old from Graubünden has changed ski equipment suppliers as the downhill world champion this season (from Fischer to Kästle) and the start of the season in St. Moritz with places 17 (super-G) and 18 (downhill) is not as desired succeeded. With the strong training on Friday, Flury indicated that she was a force to be reckoned with on the second downhill run.
“It’s great that it works so well with the new material,” said Flury in the SRF interview. «The ride felt very wild. It had a few harder hits, I was quite at my limit. Nevertheless, I made it to the finish line with the necessary relaxedness and joy.”
For her part, Hählen, who had left Val d’Isère injured for the last two years, broke the zipper on her racing dress shortly before the start, which fortunately didn’t have too much of a negative impact on the aerodynamics.
There is another Super-G on the program in Val d’Isère on Sunday. The start is scheduled for 11 a.m.
