Lenzerheide: "Relaxed" Goetschl leads training run

By Published On: March 12th, 2007Comments Off on Lenzerheide: "Relaxed" Goetschl leads training run

Speed specialist Renate Goetschl looked ready to boost her campaign for the World Cup overall title on Monday, posting the fastest time in a training session ahead of the season’s final downhill. The fight for the women's overall title is tighter than it has been in several years, with four skiers still in contention.
    Austrian technical specialist Marlies Schild leads with 1,302 points, with teammate Nicole Hosp second on 1,287 points. Julia Mancuso of the United States is third with 1,251, while Goetschl is fourth with 1,200.


LENZERHEIDE, Switzerland — Speed specialist Renate Goetschl looked ready to boost her campaign for the World Cup overall title on Monday, posting the fastest time in a training session ahead of the season’s final downhill.
    Goetschl, who slipped to fourth place in the overall standings after a weekend of technical races in Zwiesel, Germany, raced down the Silvano Beltrametti course in 1 minute, 23.92 seconds.
    The fight for the women's overall title is tighter than it has been in several years, with four skiers still in contention.
Austrian technical specialist Marlies Schild leads with 1,302 points, with teammate Nicole Hosp second with 1,287 points. Julia Mancuso of the United States is third with 1,251, while Goetschl is fourth with 1,200.
    Two-time overall champion Anja Paerson of Sweden was second in training Monday in 1:24.32. Paerson won three golds at the World Championships on home snow in Are, Sweden, in February but has failed to win a single World Cup race this season.
    Mancuso — who shared the overall lead with Goetschl before last weekend's races — was third in training in 1:24.44. Hosp crossed fourth in 1:25.12.
    Schild, who has won seven of eight slaloms this season, was only 14th, 4.47 seconds off the leading pace.
    The finals start Wednesday with a downhill followed by a super G on Thursday, and Schild will likely lose her overall lead. But she could easily regain any lost ground in the weekend's slalom and giant slalom.
    Only the top 25 racers in the World Cup downhill standings and the new junior world champion — Liechtenstein’s Tina Weirather — are qualified for this final downhill as well as skiers having eventually scored over 400 points in other disciplines. World Cup points are only awarded to the best 15 in each race — so Schild would not have scored any points with her training finish Monday.
    
Goetschl aiming for more
Goetschl, who celebrated her seventh win of the season two weeks ago at Tarvisio, Italy, in a super G, is aiming for another triumph in Lenzerheide where she already excelled two years ago during the 2005 Finals. She won the downhill at that occasion.
    The Austrian veteran has only a slim chance at winning the overall crystal globe on Sunday, yet that’s not preventing her from remaining focused and motivated until the last race.
    "I feel relaxed now, this course is nice and the weather in great so I'm aiming for two good races here this week," she said. "I had a great season so far and I achieved more than I thought so I don't worry too much about the general classification. It's already fun to battle with much younger racers and I'll do my best to give them a hard time as long as possible."
    
Hosp just 15 points behind Schild
Hosp, the only skier to have reached the podium in all disciplines this winter, and Julia Mancuso, runner-up in the downhill standings, are the best candidates for the big globes awarded here on Sunday.
    Hosp is only 15 points behind Schild and 36 ahead of Mancuso entering the downhill race on Wednesday. She has a fair chance to regain the lead if the Californian from Squaw Valley doesn't clearly finish ahead of her in that competition. Goetschl could, in fact, help her two teammates with another win here, in taking away precious points from their American challenger.
    It’s also the case for Paerson, who has not finished a race on the podium since her amazing performances at Are last month. The Swede is still eager to win her first World Cup race this season. She certainly has found memories from Lenzerheide, where she captured her second overall title two years ago with an advance of only three points on Janica Kostelic.
    This captivating World Cup battle may well last until the end of the last race — Sunday's giant slalom — as was the case in 2005, when Anja Paerson finally beat Janica Kostelic by a mere three points at the end of a long season.
    Mancuso was fourth here in downhill in March 2005 but neither Hosp nor Schild competed in the downhill then. As do the other top contenders, Mancuso doesn't want to reflect too much about her chances to grab the overall title.
    "It's more important to concentrate on the next race than speculate about how many points you need to score to win the title," she said last week in Zwiesel. "As I already said, it's nice and also unexpected for me to be in this position now but I only aim to ski as fast as possible and win races — not just points."
    A men's downhill training run is scheduled for Tuesday morning. The downhills are planned for Wednesday and the super G’s on Thursday. A team event counting for the Nations Cup is scheduled on Friday and the technical races over the weekend. The men’s giant slalom is planned for Saturday and the slalom on the Sunday, while the women's slalom is planned for Saturday followed by the giant slalom on Sunday.

    — The Associated Press contributed to this report


Women's World Cup downhill training
LENZERHEIDE, Switzerand — Results Monday from a women's World Cup downhill training session on the Silvano-Beltrametti course:
1. Renate Goetschl, Austria, 1 minute, 23.92 seconds.
2. Anja Paerson, Sweden, Sweden, 1:24.32.
3. Julia Mancuso, United States, 1:24.44.
4. Nicole Hosp, Austria, 1:25.12.
5. Ingrid Jacquemod, France, 1:25.56.
6. Andrea Fischbacher, Austria, 1:25.60.
7. Maria Riesch, Germany, 1:26.05.
8. Nadia Styger, Switzerland, 1:26.16.
9. Stacey Cook, United States, 1:26.23.
10. Tina Weirather, Liechtenstein, 1:26.34.

 

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About the Author: Pete Rugh