Super G, Women

The women’s Super G was the third Alpine skiing event for females held in Sochi. The race was held as scheduled on Saturday, 15 February, in the Rosa Khutor Alpine Center and started at an altitude of 1,580 metres between the sections “Devil’s Spine” and “Forest Drop”. During this winter the five World Cup Super Gs were won by Lara Gut (Beaver Creek, Lake Louise, and the second race in Cortina), Tina Weirather (St. Moritz), and Elisabeth Görgl (first race in Cortina) and the current standing saw Gut in the lead ahead of Weirather, Anna Fenninger, and Görgl, the 2011 World Champion. But Weirather was unable to compete after her crash in the last downhill training run when she sustained a shin contusion. Lindsey Vonn, bronze medalist from Vancouver and Super G World Cup winner 2010/11 and 2011/12, also missed the Games after tearing her right ACL twice in 2013, and 2010 gold medalist Andrea Fischbacher failed to qualify. This left Tina Maze, the 2010 silver medallist, reigning World Champion from 2013, and winner of the Super G World Cup in 2012/13 as the favorite.

The race started unusually as seven of the first eight starters did not finish the course. When second starter Leanne Smith (USA) came down the course in 1:28.38, she didn’t realise that the next six skiers would fail to finish. Finally Fabienne Suter (SUI) with bib number 9 did complete the course in a respectable 1:26.89, which would eventually place her seventh. Nevertheless her time was not beaten until seven skiers later, when Nicole Hosp (AUT) took the lead in a time of 1:26.18. Her countrywoman, Anna Fenninger then skied the course 0.66 seconds better than Hosp, giving the Austrians the first two places. Tina Maze (SLO) took over the bronze medal place with a time of 1:26.28, but this was short lived as Lara Gut (SUI) went 0.03 seconds faster. In the end the two Austrian leaders were split when Super Combined winner Maria Höfl-Riesch (GER) posted a time of 1:26.07, taking the silver medal.

Fenninger, who was the third Austrian in a row to win the women’s Super G after Dorfmeister in 2006 and Fischbacher in 2010, won the race with an average speed of 88.40 km/hr, 13.42 metres ahead of Höfl-Riesch. Both Fenninger and Höfl-Riesch used Head skis, while bronze medalist Hosp used Fischer. The gold medal awarded to Fenninger included a fragment of the Chelyabinsk meteor, which burst in a superbolide flash over the Chelyabinsk Oblast and caused a powerful shock wave exactly one year prior to this event, on 15 February 2013.