Enlarge image
Lena Durr
Photo: Piermarco Tacca / dpa
Lena Dürr sensationally won her first World Cup slalom and prevented the record victory of skiing queen Mikaela Shiffrin, which was expected by everyone.
The 31-year-old drove 0.06 seconds faster than the American in the second goal run in Spindlermühle/Czech Republic and denied her her 86th triumph.
In the last race before the World Championships in Meribel and Courchevel (February 5th to 19th), Dürr went into the final from second place in the first race and snatched first place from the leading Shiffrin.
It was her second World Cup victory after the premiere at the City Event in Moscow in 2013. Third place went to young Croatian Zrinka Ljutic (0.49 seconds back).
The day before, Dürr had finished second behind Shiffrin in the same place.
The serial winner is aiming for the 34-year-old World Cup record of the great Swede Ingemar Stenmark, who celebrated his 86th and final success in 1989.
Sander misses the first podium of his career
In the men's category, Andreas Sander narrowly missed his first World Cup podium.
The 33-year-old speed specialist finished fourth in the Super-G in Cortina d'Ampezzo and equaled his best career result in the World Cup.
Sander was four hundredths of a second behind when Swiss Marco Odermatt won in third place.
“Today I finally found the attack again.
There had to be an answer," said the veteran on ZDF, referring to his sobering 22nd place on Saturday.
In 2021, Sander won World Cup silver in Cortina in the downhill.
The overall World Cup leader and yesterday's winner, Odermatt, accepted his eighth win of the season with an incredulous shrug.
The advantage over the Italian Dominik Paris was 0.76 seconds, third was Daniel Hemetsberger (+1.03) from Austria.
Odermatt's permanent rival Aleksander Aamodt Kilde from Norway retired after a driving error.
The Swiss is one of the big favorites at the Alpine Ski World Championships from February 6th to 19th.
Despite Sander's positive outlier, the German men's team starts with outsider chances, their dry spell without a podium place continued in Cortina in the absence of Thomas Dreßen.
Josef Ferstl, Vice World Champion Romed Baumann and Dominik Schwaiger made a mistake and ended up on ranks 30, 37 and 39. Simon Jocher dropped out.
The race was determined by falls and retirements: 21 of the 60 starters did not finish.
ara/sid/dpa
