Saturday,
December 29, 2007
Italian Women Skiers Devastate Austrian
Hosts at World Cup
The
ANNOTICO Report
Then, Italian
skier Chiara Costazza
won a women's World Cup slalom race in Lienz,
Austria, by beating defending overall World Cup champion Nicole Hosp by nearly
three-quarters of one second.Finland's Tanja Poutiainen was third.
The overall World
Cup points leader is Nicole Hosp of
AFP
The 27-year-old
clocked the fastest times in both runs to finish 1.28sec ahead of American
Julia Mancuso with
Karbon has gotten off to a
flying start this season in her favourite discipline
after four years hit by knee and ankle injuries.
Her success was
her fourth in World Cup races after Solden, Austria
and Panorama, Canada this season and Alta Badia,
Italy in 2003.
"The second
leg included tricky passages which had to be mastered to win," said Karbon.
"Between
those passages I had to give it everything I had, which I succeeded in doing
perfectly."
The mighty
Austrians were wiped out on their home ground with Elisabeth Gorgl taking fourth, as race favourites
Nicole Hosp (16th) and Marlies Schild
(24th) finished way out of contention after struggling
on both runs.
Hosp described
the morning as "a cursed day for
But if the hosts
had a disastrous showing, Italy shone with four top ten finishes - Karbon, Gius, Manuela Molgg (7th) and Camilla Alfieri (10th).
Karbon added: "We're
beginning to reap the rewards of our hard work."
World Cup leader
Lindsey Vonn of the United States, who is not a giant
slalom specialist, dropped out of contention from the first run in which she
finished 38th.
Vonn, however, remains in
command in the overall World Cup standings after 13 events with a total of 474
points, ahead of Mancuso (444) and Hosp (434).
But the season
looks certainly over for her teammate Resi Stiegler who was stretchered off
after suffering a spectacular fall in which she narrowly missed hitting her
head against a tree.
Stiegler, 22, suffered a broken
left arm and right leg as well as torn cruciate
ligaments to her right knee after she slid off the piste
and under the protective netting during her opening run.
The daughter of
men's 1964 Olympic slalom champion Pepi Stiegler, who is originally from
Costazza Takes WC Slalom at Hochstein
December 29, 2007
Italian skier Chiara Costazza has won a women's
World Cup slalom race in
Costazza finished the Hochstein
course in a combined time of one minute, 54.97 seconds. Hosp was second,
0.68 seconds back.
The victory makes
the Italian the first non-Austrian to win a World Cup women's slalom race since
December of last year, when Therese Borssen of
American Lindsey Vonn, the overall World Cup points
leader coming into Saturday's race, finished more than 3.5 seconds behind Costazza. Vonn fell to second
overall behind Hosp, who has 514 points to the American's 480. Maria Riesch of
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