Maze extends lead as Rebensburg wins super-G

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy: Germany’s giant slalom Olympic champion Viktoria Rebensburg defied the difficult conditions on the Olimpia delle Tofane course here yesterday to win a World Cup super-G for her second win of the season.
Nicole Schmidhofer of Austria finished second at 0.33sec with World Cup leader Tina Maze of Slovenia finishing third at 0.34sec to boost her overall advantage for the second consecutive day.
Maze has 1474 points with overall title German rival Maria Hoefl-Riesch, who finished in a disappointing 19th place a day after failing to finish the downhill, in second on 756.
Her podium finish means she is also the new leader of the super-G standings on 290 points with American Lindsey Vonn second at only four points adrift.
Persistent snowfall, which began on Saturday evening, meant visibility would prove an issue for the super-G and organizers were forced to lower the start gate.
It appeared to play in 23-year-old Rebensburg’s favor. Starting with bib number nine, she came down fastest to take the provisional lead as a number of big names failed to live up to expectations as conditions slowly worsened.
Vonn, the four-time World Cup champion, had dominated Maze in Saturday’s downhill to signal her return to top form having taken a month away from racing and returned to competition only last week.
But after Maze, starting 17th, had finished her race to place provisional third, the American, starting 20th, finished 0.83 behind Rebensburg in seventh place.
Julia Mancuso was next to start but the American suffered a minor setback when one of her poles got stuck as she tried to rocket out the start gate.
She finished the top American, ahead of Leanne Smith and Vonn, at 0.69 off the winning pace but the mistake probably cost her a place on the podium.