SAALBACH, Austria - Switzerland's overall champion Lara Gut-Behrami added a third Alpine skiing World Cup crystal globe to her season's haul after taking the women's super-G title in the Austrian resort of Saalbach on Friday.
Gut-Behrami clinched the overall and giant slalom titles last Sunday and can still end the year with four globes, with the downhill set for Saturday.
She finished seventh in the season's final super-G, won by Czech skier-snowboarder Ester Ledecka, to secure the title with 30 points more than Italian Federica Brignone, second in the race with Norway's Kajsa Vickhoff Lie third.
"I'm so happy, super proud about that. Super-G is the discipline I really love and so to win the globe again is unbelievable," said Gut-Behrami, whose title was a record-equalling fifth in super-G.
"Today has been a challenging race... I enjoyed the skiing, it's incredible that they were able to manage to have a course like that because it's so warm, it's been raining and it was good to ski."
Her title made Gut-Behrami the first Swiss female since Vreni Schneider in 1995 to win three different World Cup globes in a single season. Schneider won the slalom, giant slalom and overall that year.
Gut-Behrami can become only the fourth female skier to take four globes in a single season, a feat previously achieved by Americans Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn and Slovenia's Tina Maze.
The 32-year-old is also only the third woman to win five super-G titles, standing level with Vonn and Germany's Katja Seizinger in the record books.
The Swiss leads the downhill standings, 19 points clear of absent Italian Sofia Goggia who broke her tibia last month, and 68 and 72 ahead of Austrians Stephanie Venier and Cornelia Huetter.
Ledecka's super-G win, with a run 0.28 quicker than Brignone down the Ulli Maier piste, was a first since February 2022 for the 2018 Olympic champion.
Huetter ended up third in the standings after finishing fifth, hitting a gate and losing grip of a ski pole that left her grimacing in pain at the finish. REUTERS
