Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami won the super-G globe on Friday, a week after securing that of the giant and the general classification of the Ski World Cup, at the end of the penultimate race of the The winter won by the Czech Ester Ledecka.
Under the bright sun and spring temperatures of Saalbach (Austria), the scene of the Ski World Cup finals since last week, Lara Gut-Behrami did not ski sharply and had to settle for 7th. place on the final super-G of the winter. This is the worst result of the season (excluding abandonment in Val d’Isère in December) in super-G for the 32-year-old skier, who separated this week from her Spanish physical trainer Alejo Hervas just after won his second big crystal globe, unhappy that he had been approached by the Swiss men’s team.
But even without shining on Friday, the 32-year-old Ticino won her fifth globe in her favorite discipline and her third of the winter after securing the giant’s globe and the general classification of the World Cup whatever happens. Saturday during the Saalbach downhill, the last race of the winter. After her race, Lara Gut-Behrami had to wait a little to be sure of being crowned. But her main rivals, the Italian Federica Brignone (2nd Friday) and the Austrian Cornelia Huetter (5th) did not manage to gain enough points to worry her.
In the end, it was the Czech Ester Ledecka who was the fastest on the salt snow of Saalbach. The 2018 Olympic super-G champion thus offers her fourth World Cup victory and her first this winter, ahead of Brignone (28 hundredths) and the Norwegian Kajsa Vickhoff Lie (30 hundredths). Ledecka, 28, was able to celebrate his first victory since February 2022 in front of the few thousand spectators present in Saalbach, where the world ski championships will take place in 2025.
Among them, the queen of skiing Mikaela Shiffrin was at the foot of the slope – in a tank top and sunglasses – to congratulate the skiers, she who ended her season last week after her victory in the Saalbach slalom, feeling not yet recovered enough from his fall at the end of January in Italy to compete in the speed events. The skiers continue on Saturday with the descent, the last race of the winter. Lara Gut-Behrami is provisionally at the top of the rankings in the premier discipline of skiing and can therefore win a fourth globe this season. If she achieves such a feat, she would join skiing legends Lindsey Vonn, Tina Maze and Mikaela Shiffrin, the only skiers to have managed to win four globes at the end of the same winter.