Goggia resumes winning ways in Lake Louise, takes season’s 1st women’s downhill – Calgary | 24CA News
Sofia Goggia picked up the place she left off in Lake Louise, Alta.
The Italian ski racer’s win Friday within the season-opening ladies’s World Cup downhill was her fourth-straight victory on the Banff National Park resort, together with her sweep of final yr’s three races.
“I’m super-happy with the outcome and result but I’m still not happy with my performance because I think I was a bit too wild and dirty today,” Goggia instructed The Canadian Press.
She however laid down a profitable time of 1 minute 47.81 seconds.
Just six hundredths of a second separated first from third with reigning Olympic downhill champion Corinne Suter of Switzerland crossing the road four-hundredths again of Goggia.
Austria’s Cornelia Huetter completed third.
“I was really in tension and anxiety when they were coming down, because you never know. It is a game of hundredths with this course, which lasts three kilometres,” Goggia mentioned.
“Winning by four hundredths of a second, what is it? It’s uncountable.”
Another downhill is scheduled for Saturday adopted by Sunday’s super-G.
Goggia was simply the third lady to attain a Lake Louise hat trick final season after Lindsey Vonn of the U.S. (2015, 2012, 2011) and Germany’s Katja Seizinger (1997).
READ MORE: Goggia dominates season opening World Cup downhill in Lake Louise
After profitable 4 of the primary 5 ladies’s downhills in 2021-22, Goggia crashed in a super-G in Cortina, Italy, simply two weeks out from the Olympic Games.
Despite leg and knee accidents, the 30-year-old earned silver in Beijing’s downhill behind Suter, who completed second to Goggia within the general downhill final season.
“We have to push each other to the limit and I’m excited for tomorrow,” Suter mentioned Friday.
“Two or three little mistakes I made today, but I think when you go fast, it happens and it is normal.”
Marie-Michele Gagnon of Lac Etechmin, Que., was dissatisfied to complete twenty fourth.
“We did a lot of giant slalom training to improve my technique and hopefully take the next step, so we did a lot less downhill training,” Gagnon mentioned.
“My feeling is a bit off right now as you can probably tell watching me go down. It’s just not as dialed in as normal.
“It’s a matter of just trying to find the good balance of attacking, but attacking in the right way.”
Stefanie Fleckenstein of Whistler, B.C., was thirty ninth. The 25-year-old skied as an impartial Friday. She’s attempting to work her manner again onto the nationwide staff.
“I’ve been independent for two years now,” Fleckenstein mentioned. “It’s definitely tough as a speed skier because the national teams get priority with a lot of training.
“The goal is definitely to use my Nor Am spot this year on the World Cup and try to re-qualify, but it’s going to be a battle.”
The season’s first race was held underneath cloudy skies and a temperature of -19 with a lightweight breeze.
U.S. ski star Mikaela Shiffrin, who received the downhill in 2017 and super-G in 2018 in Lake Louise, didn’t journey to Alberta. She’s concentrating on slalom and large slalom this season.
The world governing physique of ski and snowboard, FIS, tried to begin the downhill season earlier this fall with cross-border males’s and ladies’s races that begin in Zermatt, Switzerland and end in Cervinia, Italy.
The males’s races Oct. 29-30 and ladies’s Nov. 5-6 have been referred to as off due to poor snow circumstances, so downhill’s season-openers reverted to its conventional Lake Louise venue.
The way forward for Lake Louise’s World Cups is unsure, nonetheless.
Alpine Canada has dedicated solely to holding a males’s pace race in Western Canada with a location nonetheless to be decided.
The introduction of ladies’s World Cup large slalom in Mont-Tremblant, Que., in 2023, and falling on the identical conventional weekend as ladies’s pace races in Lake Louise, is a strike towards Lake Louise retaining what’s been the one ladies’s downhill races in North America.
“I’m sorry because Lake Louise is a fairy tale place,” Goggia mentioned. “I really do like it but not just because I win. It’s the last time for a hat trick. We will see, but I just (won) one so I am happy with it.”
Each ladies’s World Cup race in Lake Louise presents 132,000 Swiss francs (C$190,000) in prize cash cut up between first to thirtieth on a descending scale. The winner earns 50,000 (C$70,000) all the way down to 550.
© 2022 The Canadian Press
