On Friday, the Swiss won the first downhill run in Crans-Montana ahead of the Austrian Cornelia Hütter, who was 21 hundredths of a second behind world champion Jasmine Flury from Switzerland. Gut-Behrami triumphed in the last four races she started and took second place in the Downhill World Cup behind the injured Sofia Goggia.
For Hütter it was the best downhill result this season. The Styrian is fourth in the discipline ranking, with Stephanie Venier now in third place. The Tyrolean missed out on a top spot this time due to mistakes in the upper part and was tenth after 40 starters. The second best ÖSV runner was Ariane Rädler in eighth place. Mirjam Puchner and Christine Scheyer did not achieve any brilliant performances.
“A bit uneasy when visiting”
The route was shortened for safety reasons – also because of the soft snow. The finish line was then at the original fourth-to-last gate; the winner’s time was 1:19.11 minutes. For Gut-Behrami it was the 44th World Cup victory and the seventh this winter. Another downhill run is scheduled for Saturday in Crans-Montana, and a Super-G is on the program on Sunday (both 10.30 a.m./live ORF 1).
“Two years ago my career was pretty much on the rocks,” Hütter alluded to in the ORF interview about her serious fall in 2022, in which she suffered a traumatic brain injury. “But I’ve definitely made a quibble about it now. When I first looked at it, I was a little uneasy, but I just worked through it a little bit day by day.” The fact that the goal had been raised suited her in this respect, “because the passage simply wasn’t there.”
Venier found that she had “simply had two or three hooks too many”. The gap of almost six tenths of a second doesn’t sound like an excessive amount, “but that’s just too much for such a short run.”
