Alpine skiing: Weirather wins World Cup super-G as Vonn crashes out

[December 04, 2017]  By Rory Carroll

(Reuters) - Liechtenstein's Tina Weirather's won the season's first World Cup super-G race at Lake Louise on Sunday as American Lindsey Vonn, the all-time biggest winner in the discipline, failed to finish after crashing for her second time in three races.

The 28-year-old Weirather, who was last year's super-G crystal globe winner, barreled down the icy course in one minute 18.52 seconds on a chilly day in the Canadian Rockies to wrap up the North American swing of the World Cup tour.

Second place went to last year's Lake Louise super-G winner Lara Gut (1:18.63) of Switzerland while the event's reigning world champion Nicole Schmidhofer (1:18.79) finished third.

Vonn failed to complete the race at Lake Louise, dubbed "Lake Lindsey" due to her long history of success on the course, after she failed to keep her skis under her when taking a wide turn, resulting in a slide out.

The 18-times World Cup race winner at the venue crashed hard with four gates to go during Friday's downhill and tied for 12th in the second downhill race of the season on Saturday.

While Vonn had a nightmare weekend at Lake Louise, it was a different story for fellow American Mikaela Shiffrin.

 

Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein takes the podium during the women's Super G race in the 2017 FIS alpine skiing World Cup at Lake Louise Ski Resort. Mandatory Credit: Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports

The slalom specialist, who shocked the skiing world by following up her first ever podium finish in the downhill on Friday with a win in Saturday's race, finished fifth (1:19.36) in Sunday's super-G

The 22-year-old Shiffrin ends the three-day swing through Lake Louise with the women's overall World Cup standings lead with 510 points, 174 ahead of Germany's Viktoria Rebensburg.

With two months to go until the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, the women now head to St. Moritz, Switzerland, for an Alpine combined event and three super-G races on Dec. 8-10.

(Reporting by Rory Carroll; Editing by Clare Fallon)

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