Tops women's downhill training in St Moritz

Slovenia's Ilka Stuhec laid down a marker for Sunday's world championship downhill by topping times in Wednesday's training in St Moritz.

Stuhec, winner of five races this season including three downhills and a super-G, timed 1min 34.53sec.

Swiss duo Fabienne Suter and Lara Gut, bronze medallist in the super-G, came in second and third, with three other teammates in the top 10.

"The slope is really nice, it has a lot of terrain and jumps, so it's fun to ski," said Stuhec, who leads the World Cup downhill standings.

"Every day will be different and everyone will be pushing more."

American speed queen Lindsey Vonn skied out of Tuesday's super-G, but was left satisfied with her training session in which she finished 11th, 2.34sec off the Slovenian's pace.

"I just wanted to get a feeling for the course," the 32-year-old said.

"I wanted to ski down solid and build my confidence, have a first look.

"I took it easy on some of the jumps because I didn't know what to expect and with this light it was hard to see the ground.

"When the light is good it's going to be really, really fun.

"Training is a good time to get a feeling for the snow and terrain," said Vonn, who was set for her first slalom practice Wednesday in a very long time ahead of possible participation in Friday's alpine combined event.

- Short night -

Super-G gold medallist Nicole Schmidhofer admitted that celebrations after her shock victory on Tuesday meant a poor showing in training, coming in 4.57sec off Stuhec.

"It was not so good," she said. "It was very slow because the night was really short!

So it wasn't really a training run for me."

Liechtenstein's Tina Weirather claimed silver behind Schmidhofer and acknowledged that she had suffered the same relatively sleepless experience after medalling in the women's opening event of the February 6-19 world championships.

"I wanted to go really easy today because I have some more training runs before my race Sunday," she said of the downhill proper.

"I wanted to save some energy because I'm a bit tired from yesterday. It was a full day, I got to bed pretty late and wasn't really able to sleep because I was so fired up."

Among other favourites, Austrian Ann Veith and Italian duo Sofia Goggia and Elena Curtoni all safely negotiated the course although Austrian Mirjam Puchner crashed out.

The women have two more downhill training sessions, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday.

Source: AFP