Crans Montana downhill put off until tomorrow

Foggy conditions in Crans Montana. (GEPA)

Overnight snow and a particularly stagnant bank of fog forced race organizers to bump Saturday’s World Cup women’s downhill to Sunday, effectively canceling the originally scheduled super combined. The weather pattern also caused havoc Friday, scrapping what would have been a second downhill training run on the brand new World Cup speed track.

Instead of attempting to run two scored races in a single day, as was accomplished with the men’s field earlier this season at Kitzbuehel, albeit with a super G, organizers opted to prioritize the downhill race over the super combined. The women’s World Cup field contested only one super combined race this season, at Altenmarkt-Zauchensee in January.

Sunday’s downhill will now be the final World Cup downhill before the March 10-17 World Cup Finals slated for Lezerheide, Switzerland. Only the top 25 athletes in each discipline qualify to start at World Cup Finals.

Germany’s Maria Hoefl-Riesch leads the discipline standings with a 475-400 margin over injured athlete Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein, who will sit out the remainder of the season. Marianne Kaufmann-Abderhalden is third with 389 points.

As for the Americans, Stacey Cook sits 11th and Julia Mancuso 14th in the World Cup downhill standings. Leanne Smith is 29th, Laurenne Ross is 35th and Jackie Wiles is 38th.