Gut-Behrami embraces imperfection to win second St. Anton super-G

Lara Gut-Behrami crossed the finish line and immediately tapped her head to indicate the mental mistakes she made down the Karl Schranz course in St. Anton.

But on a day when all skiers struggled to ski cleanly on one of the toughest super-G courses on the World Cup circuit, the Swiss star still ended up on the top of the podium.

Gut-Behrami won her 18th career super-G race on Sunday to move into second place on the women's all-time list, passing Austria's Renate Götschl and now trailing only the USA's Lindsey Vonn (28).

"It didn't really go as planned," admitted the Olympic and world super-G champion, who finished ahead of Italian pair Federica Brignone (+0.15s) and Marta Bassino (+0.19s).

"St. Anton is a tough race, it's a really interesting slope."

On a challenging course set by the International Ski Federation's Alberto Senigagliesi, 17 of the 45 starters failed to finish and it wasn't until the fifth skier, Austria's Ramona Siebenhofer, that a racer reached the finish area without making major errors.

Gut-Behrami started with bib No. 7 and had an adventurous and imperfect run. She had her right ski in the air at one point on the full-length top section, and almost missed the difficult blue control gate following the jump into the Eisfall.

But impressive recoveries allowed to her to maintain her speed, and she refocused to post the best combined time in the last two sectors of the course and ski into first place.

"On the flat part I made a lot of mistakes and I never expected to be that fast," the 31-year-old said.

"The last part I tried to ski clean and let the ski go. I'm not so happy with the top (section) but I'm happy with the result."

With her 36th World Cup victory in all disciplines, Gut-Behrami joined Germany's Katja Seizinger in equal eighth place on the all-time women's list, and also reached the 70th World Cup podium of her storied career.

Fresh off Saturday's win on the shortened course, Brignone started full of confidence on Sunday but drifted wide before the entry to the Eisfall to fall behind Gut-Behrami's pace.

She recovered to ski a brilliant bottom section for the second day in a row, almost catching the Swiss leader but ultimately running out of track.

"I had this big mistake before Eisfall and I was really stuck before the steep and I lost a lot of time. I'm sorry because like yesterday I made up time (on the bottom section)," Brignone said.

"Today I was really good but not as good as yesterday — but that's OK, I'm really happy about my weekend."

Her teammate, giant slalom specialist Bassino, came from outside the top 15 seeds to reach the podium in a super-G race for the first time in over two years.

"I'm really happy that when I have a solid ski, I can do it in every discipline, so that makes me really proud," said Bassino, whose previous super-G podium was also in St. Anton, in January 2021.

It was a big day for the Italian team, who claimed three of the top four positions despite their best speed skier Sofia Goggia opting to sit out as a precautionary measure following her crash on Saturday.

"It's really amazing when it's like this, I share a podium with Fede and then also Elena (Curtoni) is fourth so we are all here," Bassino said.

"It's always really nice because the work that we have done is paying off."

The Italians will hope to carry that momentum into three home speed races next weekend at one of the most famous stops on the women's Audi FIS World Cup tour in Cortina d'Ampezzo.