Vonn crashes as Brignone wins Cortina World Cup super-G

Federica Brignone kept up her outstanding performance by winning the super-G at Cortina d'Ampezzo on Sunday, which helped her widen her lead in the World Cup standings, while comeback specialist Lindsey Vonn got injured.

Veteran skier Brignone, already the oldest woman to win a World Cup race at 34 years old, clinched the top spot with a time of one minute and 21.64 seconds, edging out reigning overall and discipline champion Lara Gut-Behrami by 0.58sec.

Brignone ensured that Italy secured a double victory at Cortina this weekend after Sofia Goggia won the downhill event on Saturday with her fourth win of the season.

Her win was also her first on the Olimpia delle Tofane course, which will host women's alpine events at the Winter Olympics next year.

"I prefer this more spring-like snow because it lets me really go fast down the slopes and every mistake I make is quickly punished," said Brignone.

All I can do is keep on skiing like I have been skiing. I just want to ski at my best and today I was able to do that.

She has had notable performances since returning to competition at age 40 after taking a nearly six-year break from the sport following a right knee replacement surgery in April, but she had a disappointing weekend at one of her familiar tracks.

A very valuable learning opportunity.

The Olympic downhill champion from 2010, who has achieved 20 podium placements with 12 of those being first-place finishes in Cortina, suffered a setback after placing 20th in the recent downhill event on Saturday.

"I think this weekend was a valuable learning experience for me, I haven't really got much practice downhill or super-G racing at this kind of high speed yet, so I need a bit more time to build on what I've learned," said Vonn.

I truly need to train more, understanding that I've only had a few months and just a few days of training, so I shouldn't expect to have perfect results every day.

Vonn stated that she intends to ski in the downhill and super-G at Garmisch next weekend, with a giant slalom competition scheduled for Kronplatz on Tuesday, as she prepares for the upcoming World Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm next month.

Goggia finished seventh, 1.25 seconds behind her fellow countrywoman and rival Brignone, who is in the running for a second overall World Cup title and is 106 points ahead of Camille Rast, who didn't participate in Sunday's event.

"I didn't ski with the same smoothness as I did yesterday, I was off pace almost everywhere," said Goggia to Rai.

I wasn't able to get into the groove of the downhill course, but I fell out of contention right at the beginning... I knew I was in trouble from that moment on. I could've potentially finished on the podium, but I got off to a terrible start.

td/ea