[ad_1]
content
In Val d’Isère, the women also start the sprint season late with 2 races and a Super-G.
Legend:
Will you receive the little crystal ball again this winter?
Corinne Suter can be trusted a lot.
Keystone
A week after the men in Val d’Isère, the women also start speed winter late. After the two Super-Gs at St. Moritz were canceled in early December due to snowfall, the weather forecasts for the two races and the Super-G in France also look slightly better.
The defending champion
Corinne Suter was a model of consistency at the highest level last winter and secured the little crystal ball on both the downhill and Super-G. The 26-year-old from Schwyz was on the podium seven times and triumphed twice: in January in the downhill at Zauchensee and in February in the Super-G in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. In 14 sprints, Suter only qualified outside the top 6 in Bansko’s two downhill races.
The other Swiss women
Lara Gut-Behrami was a bit less consistent than her teammate last season, but she also won twice. The Ticino woman triumphed at Crans-Montana in both races at the end of February, ahead of Suter. Michelle Gisin, on the other hand, the third Swiss trump card, experienced a disappointing winter of speed in 2019/20, with just one top 10 spot each in downhill and super-G.
Meanwhile, Wendy Holdener refuses to participate. The Schwyzerin prefers slalom training to sprinting.
Head coach Beat Tschuor can take advantage of unlimited resources when it comes to speed. Swiss-Ski has 10 downhill starting positions and 9 in Super-G.
International competition
The strongest sprinter alongside Suter and Gut-Behrami was Italian Federica Brignone in the 2019/20 season. The Czech Ester Ledecka also shone in the descent and the Austrians in the Super-G, led by Nicole Schmidhofer, Stephanie Venier and Nina Ortlieb. Mikaela Shiffrin also drove hard until the end of her season. This winter, however, the American wants to focus primarily on technical disciplines.
The first training
The results of the first training session in Val d’Isère show that Suter and Gut-Behrami are ready for the start of the speed winter. Suter finished in fifth place, 40 hundredths of a second behind the fastest of the day, Alice McKennis (USA). Gut-Behrami lost 67 hundredths of a second in seventh place. The other Swiss women were out of the top 20.
