On a stunning ultimate day of the ladies’s World Cup season, Cornelia Huetter gained the downhill race in Saalbach, Austria, to clinch her first-ever title and deny Lara Intestine-Behrami her fourth this week.
Huetter had began Saturday’s race fourth within the self-discipline standings, behind Austrian teammate Stephanie Venier, the injured Sofia Goggia and Intestine-Behrami, who wanted to complete ninth or higher to guard her lead within the standings.
Huetter was twelfth out the beginning gate and, after she soared into the lead, all eyes turned to Intestine-Behrami.
Having already gained the general, big slalom and super-G titles over the previous week on the World Cup finals, Intestine-Behrami was anticipated to grow to be the fourth feminine skier to win 4 classifications in a single season, after Lindsey Vonn, Tina Maze and, most not too long ago, Mikaela Shiffrin achieved the feat.
Nevertheless, the Swiss standout was maybe too cautious and ended up crossing the road in eleventh and Huetter was instantly surrounded by her jubilant teammates.
It nonetheless wasn’t over as Huetter then confronted an anxious wait to verify not one of the remaining skiers have been quicker as that may have denied the 31-year-old the 100 factors for the win that she wanted to beat Intestine-Behrami to the title.
Ilka Stuhec and Nicol Delago went nerve-crushingly shut — beginning seventeenth and 18th respectively — and Huetter had her head in her palms after Stuhec completed simply 0.17 seconds behind her. Delago was third, 0.49 behind Huetter.
Intestine-Behrami dropped to seventeenth and out of the factors, ending 28 factors behind Huetter.
