'I'm not that bad': Gut-Behrami wins Garmisch Super G for first victory of the season
Jan 26, 2025·Alpine Skiing)
With all eyes on two Italian champions seeking to add another chapter to their scintillating rivalry, Lara Gut-Behrami (SUI/Head) upstaged both of them — and everyone else — on her way to a historic victory.
Gut-Behrami finally won her first race of the season in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Super G on Sunday, with a narrative-shifting return to the stunning form that saw her claim three Crystal Globes a year ago.
Skiing brilliantly from top to bottom, the Swiss superstar finished more than a third of a second ahead of the field in claiming her 46th World Cup victory to equal Renate Götschl (AUT) in fifth place on the all-time women's list.
Italian headline acts Federica Brignone (ITA/Rossignol, third) and Sofia Goggia (ITA/Atomic, fourth) couldn't keep pace, with Kajsa Vickhoff Lie (NOR/Head) playing the role of the cat among the superstar pigeons by finishing second.
Gut-Behrami was in a class of her own, however, skiing flawlessly to win for the fifth time in Super G on the Kandahar course in the Bavarian Alps.
"It has been a weird start of the season, I've been struggling a bit," Gut-Behrami said. "I had to find the confidence back, the way to push on the skis again.
"A few times I missed something, I made mistakes. I'm happy that today everything came together."
Although she has not quite been able to reproduce the other-worldly form of her eight-win campaign from a season ago, Gut-Behrami showed on Sunday that she is still a threat for multiple Crystal Globes this year, as well as medals in the world championships next month in Saalbach, Austria.
"It gives you another energy, I will take that," she said of her timely victory.
The defending World Cup Super G champion increased her lead in the discipline standings to 75 points with three races left, and closed to within 70 points of Brignone's lead in the chase for the Overall title.
Beyond her possible accolades for this season, Gut-Behrami continues to carve out her lofty place in the sport's history.
The only four women with more World Cup wins than her are some of the biggest legends in Alpine skiing: Mikaela Shiffrin (USA/Atomic, 99), Lindsey Vonn (USA/Head, 82), Annemarie Moser-Pröll (AUT, 62) and Vreni Schneider (SUI, 55).
Two skiers a little below Gut-Behrami on that list, Brignone (32 wins) and Goggia (26), entered Sunday's race as favourites after sharing four out of the last five speed victories on tour between them, including a 1-2 finish separated by one-hundredth of a second in Saturday's Downhill.
But Brignone made a line error in the middle of the course and another mistake near the finish, and Goggia couldn't master the lower technical turns, leaving the door open for Gut-Behrami and Lie, who skied after them.
"I think I didn't make it so good the last part," Brignone said. "I went too strong on my foot (on one of the final gates) and it ejected me outside and I was so slow the last two gates."
Brignone, who was visibly frustrated after crossing the finish line despite taking the provisional lead, was left to tip her cap to Gut-Behrami, who bested her by 0.38 seconds two skiers later.
"I don't think I was in front of Lara today, she made an upper part better than mine," Brignone said.
"She's an amazing skier. As always, she is winning the World Cup in Super G the last years and I'm always second. When you beat her, it's that you (did) an amazing job."
After heavy snow fell at the top of the course — and rain at the bottom — during inspection, causing a 15-minute delay at the start, the race unfolded without precipitation, albeit in flat light conditions.
The trickiest part of the course, a right-footed blind turn coming off the jump through the Kandahar arch midway down the piste, caught out many of the world's best skiers.
Among them, Conny Hütter (AUT/Head), Michelle Gisin (SUI/Salomon) and Mirjam Puchner (AUT/Atomic) all missed the gate to register DNFs, while Ariane Raedler (AUT/Head) crashed at the same spot, though she appeared to escape serious injury.
Brignone had to adjust direction upon landing after the jump and lost some time, but Head skiers Gut-Behrami and Lie navigated it perfectly to set up the rest of their charge to the top two steps of the podium.
"It's Norwegian weather," Lie said. "It's rainy, it's salty and I was skiing on this since I was a little kid.
"I really like the conditions, you can be active and move the outside ski. But it was fast today so you really had to go with your instincts."
Gut-Behrami was less complimentary of the conditions, even though she made it look easy on a course she has long since mastered.
"It's a challenging slope," the reigning Olympic Super G champion said. "Today we had tough conditions, it's not the conditions where I ski the best. It was a little bit slippery, a little bit soft."
The 33-year-old is starting to use her experience to learn, however, that she can raise her game in precisely these situations.
"When you don't have the perfect conditions for yourself, you stop thinking and just try to ski," Gut-Behrami said.
"I also think that, in the end, I like challenging conditions. Maybe I have to start thinking that in those conditions, I'm not that bad."
Not bad at all.
