Season summary
The first event in this discipline, which did not take place until 8 December 2023 in St. Moritz, Switzerland, was easily won by three-time defending downhill champion Sofia Goggia, who triumphed by almost a second over the field. [3] The follow-up race on the same slope was canceled due to continuing heavy snowfall. [4]
In the next event, 2022 discipline champion Federica Brignone of Italy notched her third victory of the season in a race that only 32 of the 57 starters were actually able to complete, a result that kept Goggia in first place for the season. [5] However, the two races after that, both in the Austrian resort of Altenmarkt-Zauchensee in mid-January, were won first by Cornelia Hütter of Austria [6] and then by four-time (2014, '16, '21, '23) discipline champion Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland (her 20th career win in the discipline, placing her second all-time among women), with Hütter second, moving Hütter and Gut-Behrami into the top two positions in the discipline for the season. [7]
Two weeks later in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Gut-Behrami won her second straight super-G (her sixth win at Cortina -- and her 41st victory overall), and, when Hütter failed to finish, Gut-Behrami grabbed the season lead in the discipline by just 10 points, but with Brignone and Goggia also still within 85 points of the lead. [8] However, the super-G scheduled for the first week of February in Garmisch-Partenkirchen was then cancelled due to warm weather. [9] However, even the time off didn't affect the proliferation of injuries, with Goggia requiring immediate surgery after breaking two bones in her right leg while doing giant slalom training in Italy, putting her on the sidelines for the rest of the season, while 2019 discipline champion Mikaela Shiffrin was still out after her crash in Cortina. [10]
The last month of the season contained four super-Gs before the finals. In the first, in Crans Montana, Switzerland, downhill specialist Stephanie Venier of Austria, who had finished second behind Gut-Behrami at Cortina, upset the field to record her first super-G win, with Brignone second, Hütter fifth, and Gut-Behrami sixth, reducing Gut-Behrami's lead over Hütter to just five points, and also moving Brignone within 34 and Venier within 94 in the discipline. [11] However, heavy snowfall in Val di Fassa, Italy prompted cancellation of both super-Gs scheduled there at the end of February, leaving only two races in the season. [12] But, when the next-to-last downhill of the season, in Kvitfjell, had both planned training runs, on 29 February and 1 March, cancelled by heavy snowfall, the downhill could not be run (as at least one training run prior to the race is required); instead, the race was converted to a super-G to replace one of the canceled races in that discipline, creating back-to-back super Gs on 2 and 3 March. [13] Gut-Behrami won the first race [14] and was second the next day behind Brignone in a race delayed repeatedly by fog, [15] allowing Gut-Behrami to open a 69-point lead over Hütter and a 74-point lead over Brignone, with just the finals remaining.
Finals
The World Cup final was held Friday, 22 March 2023 in Saalbach, Austria. Only the top 25 skiers in the World Cup Super-G discipline and the winner of the Junior World Championship in the discipline, plus any skiers who have scored at least 500 points in the World Cup overall classification for the season, were eligible to compete in the final, and only the top 15 earned World Cup points. However, shortly after winning the Junior World Championship, 20-year-old Swiss skier Malorie Blanc required season-ending surgery to repair a tear of her anterior cruciate ligament, [16] forcing her to join past discipline champions Corinne Suter and Shiffrin, plus Goggia and fellow Swiss speed skiers Joana Hählen and Jasmine Flury, on the sidelines for the final. Also, no 500-point skiers who were not otherwise eligible chose to compete, leaving the race with a field of 21 starters.
Because of her huge lead going into the final, all Gut-Behrami needed to do was place no worse than 8th to clinch the season crown, and she actually placed seventh, thus winning her fifth super-G season title to tie Katja Seizinger and her former rival Lindsey Vonn for most titles in the discipline; meanwhile, versatile Czech snowboarder and Alpine skier Ester Ledecká won the race, her first Alpine win since missing the entire 2022-23 Alpine season due to injury. [17]
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