Lake Louise (AB), Canada – Maria Riesch of Germany earned her first victory in Lake Louise since 2006 on Friday, narrowly beating rival and friend, American Lindsey Vonn in a repeat of her 2006 World Cup downhill victory. On Friday she was 12 hundredths of a second faster than Vonn, who has won the Lake Louise downhill seven times in her career and led a storm of seven Americans into the top 30. Austria’s Elisabeth Goergl was third.n“I think winning is always exciting,” said Riesch. “I don’t have as many World Cup wins as Lindsey has. This is my 15th today, and every one is always special. I am really proud that I won this downhill today.
“Somebody said (Vonn) has seven downhill wins here, which is really unbelievable. I think in at least half of them her advantage was more than a second, so it is a big challenge to beat her in Lake Louise,” added Riesch. “There are also other downhills where she is hard to beat. Beating Lindsey in downhill, no matter where, is really special.”
“I thought I skied really well and unfortunately it wasn’t enough for the win today, but I’m really happy with second place,” said a sniffling Vonn, who is fighting a head cold. “It’s just a cold. I’ve raced through a lot worse things than a cold so I didn’t even consider not racing today.”
Vonn has a career 12 podium finishes in Lake Louise since earning the first World Cup victory there in 2004. She had carried a record streak of five consecutive downhill wins into Friday’s race.
“The whole U.S. team did a great job,” added Vonn. “We had seven girls in the top 30 and that just shows that we are skiing really well as a team. We’ve shown in training that we can be fast and I’m glad we stepped it up for the race.”
Vonn’s teammate, Julia Mancuso, said she skied into fourth place, just off the podium, while thinking of best friend Chemmy Alcott of Great Britain, who suffered a severely broken leg in the final training run Thursday.
“I skied solid, but there’s definitely room to go faster,” said Mancuso, who was on her way to visit Alcott at the hospital in nearby Banff. “I had a long day yesterday just worrying about my friend and going to the hospital just waiting her for her to get done with surgery, so it’s nice to have a solid race run under my belt.”
Alice McKennis, of Glenwood Springs, Colo., ran first and spent a good portion of time in the leader box before slipping to 11th. Leanne Smith (Conway, N.H.), Laurenne Ross (Klamath Falls, Ore.), Stacey Cook (Mammoth Lakes, Calif.) and Chelsea Marshall (Pittsfield, Vt.) all scored World Cup points by landing inside the top 30.
“Conditions were awesome, hard, icy and very challenging for the girls – It was a very good race,” said U.S. Ski Team Women’s Head Coach Alex Hoedlmoser. “Pretty much the whole downhill team is producing results and that’s good to see. Everyone is really fired up for tomorrow to have a better result than today. The girls aren’t even satisfied with their rankings, so it’s good for them all.”
“Everyone skied really well,” added Mancuso. “A couple people had higher expectations because of the training runs, but in general this was pretty cool.”
Britt Janyk (Whistler, British Columbia) finished 39th in 1:31.95 for the best result from a struggling Canadian women’s team.
“It’s the same as the training runs. My runs have been pretty solid, the speed just isn’t there. I can feel it in the flats. On this course it is so important to maintain your speed on the top flats,” said Janyk. “I just need to go back, look at the video and move forward to tomorrow. It’s obviously not the result that I am looking for.
“We will look at everything,” she added.
As for the other Canadians, Georgia Simmerling (Vancouver, British Columbia) was 45th, Victoria Stevens (Mont-Tremblant, Quebec) 46th and Kelly McBroom (Canmore, Alberta) 51st. Stefanie Irwin (Calgary, Alberta) missed a gate near the end of her run and did not finish.
Today’s second women’s downhill of the Bombardier Lake Louise Winterstart is scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m. MT.
OFFICIAL RESULTS
Audi FIS Alpine World Cup
Lake Louise, AB, Canada
December 3, 2010
Women’s Downhill
1. Maria Riesch, Germany, 1:28.96
2. Lindsey Vonn, Vail, CO, 1:29.08
3. Elisabeth Goergl, Austria, 1:29.17
4. Julia Mancuso, Squaw Valley, CA, 1:29.95
5. Anna Fenninger, Austria, 1:30.15