Federica Brignone set an Italian record in the Alpine skiing World Cup by winning a wind-swept super-G Sunday that saw pre-race favorite Lara Gut-Behrami crash out through the safety fences.
Brignone was 0.11 seconds faster than her teammate Elena Curtoni down a fast course short-ened to less than one minute.
The start was brought lower down the exposed Corviglia hill by strong crosswinds higher up.
A 17th career World Cup win for Brignone is the most by an Italian woman in the 55-year history of the World Cup.
“That’s really amazing.I hope that I’m not done with the victories,” said Brignone after moving ahead of Deborah Compagnoni, whose 16th win came in January 1998.
Mikaela Shiffrin extended her lead in the overall standings by placing third, 0.
43 behind Brignone, despite wearing the No.2 bib.The early start gave her little idea how gusty winds would affect racing in the bright sunshine after a 50-minute delay.
“I was a little bit nervous running (No.) 2 al-ready,” Shiffrin told Swiss broadcaster RTS.“Sometimes you get this push from the wind from behind and then it’s a little hard to handle that speed.
It proved tough even for No.7 starter Gut-Behrami, the world champion in super-G who had won Saturday when cloud cover made the rolling terrain tough to see.
The Swiss star went too fast on a direct line ap-proaching a sharp left-hand turn she was unlikely to make.
She was unbalanced by the terrain and went sideways standing upright into and through the safety fences.
Gut-Behrami sat still on the snow awaiting at-tention before she skied down to the finish area.
She was later filmed in the finish area limping to congratulate Brignone in the leader’s chair.—AP
