ALPINE:

Rebensburg wins, Prefontaine 9th in Zwiesel GS

Feb. 6, 2011      ♦ Photo: Marie-Pier Prefontaine

ZWIESEL, Germany — Olympic champion Viktoria Rebensburg of Germany won a women's World Cup giant slalom race Sunday, and World Cup leader Maria Riesch extended her lead on defending champion Lindsey Vonn.

Rebensburg had a comfortable lead after the first run and held on to earn her second career World Cup victory, clocking a combined time of 1 minute, 36.96 seconds on the Arberg course. Federica Brignone of Italy earned her best career result in taking second in 1:37.49 and Kathrin Zettel of Austria was third in 1:37.85.

Marie-Pier Prefontaine of Canada was ninth, while Marie-Michele Gagnon picked up points in 29th place.

"It's always an amazing feeling to win a race, I am now really looking forward to the worlds," Rebensburg said of the championships that begin Tuesday in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, with the women's super-G.

Riesch placed 11th, 1.56 seconds behind Rebensburg, her German teammate. Vonn finished 18th and trails Riesch by 156 points in the overall standings.

The American returned to the slopes after sitting out Friday's slalom following a heavy crash in training two days earlier that resulted in a concussion.

In a note on her Facebook page before Sunday's race, Vonn said she felt "considerably better than I did a few days ago."

Head U.S. women's coach Alex Hoedlmoser was satisfied with Vonn's performance heading into worlds.

"(Vonn skied) awesome in the steeps today, it was fantastic actually," he said. "Then she started to back off a bit on that last break over, but her GS is still very strong. She just needs to keep the intensity all the way to the finish."

The three-time defending overall champion was 1.94 seconds behind the winner to equal her worst finish this season in races she has completed.

Julia Mancuso placed 21st for the U.S. and Sarah Schleper was 25th in the race that was postponed from Saturday. Fog and wind also delayed Sunday's start by nearly three hours.

That led to a late departure on the three-hour drive to Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

"They were so desperate to get this GS completed we had to wait it out," Hoedlmoser said. "But it always comes at an expense, especially for Lindsey and Julia (Mancuso), who need to go straight into the super-G and downhill training runs and then into the tech(nical) races.

"It's going to be a lot of days in a row and is far from ideal preparations for the World Championships."

Préfontaine secured her first World Cup top-10 finish. Préfontaine has been a dominant skier at the Nor-Am level but her previous career-best World Cup result was 24th at St. Moritz in December 2010.

"It feels great. It finally happened," said Préfontaine. "I didn't ski my best on the first run but I was still in there and I just attacked the second run as hard as I could.

"Things have been going so well in Nor-Ams but I've just been kind of stuck at World Cup. I'm more confident now after this result and going into the World Championships anything can happen, I guess."

Sunday's race, held over from Saturday due to strong winds and poor visibility, was pushed back several times on Sunday. When the second run finally started, visibility was poor.

"We were prepared," said technical head coach Jim Pollock. "We knew things would be goofy with the weather. We kept our focus.

"They postponed it one day and they lowered the start to the minimum. After losing Maribor (to cancellation) we were in favour of going ahead."

"Marie-Michèle (Gagnon)went quite hard on the second run, too, and was looking good," said Pollock. "She got out of it on one turn and was thrown in the air sideways and stopped dead.

"It was already pretty dark and starting to get rougher but Marie-Pier made a great second run. She skied really well.

"That's a big day. This whole weekend was pretty good for us."

Préfontaine said the course at Arber Zwiesel doesn't really suit her style of skiing but she just tried to give it her best shot.

"I'm really happy," she said. "It was pretty dark but because I was starting the second run early the snow was really nice."

Pollock said Préfontaine's breakthrough result will give her a welcome confidence boost as she prepares for Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

"I'm not really surprised by the result because when you go to Nor-Ams or Europa Cup with Marie-Pier she will win hands-down, by big margins," said Pollock.

"When she comes to World Cup she's still looking to find her footing, to really believe she belongs. A lot of times she tries too hard. This is a big step for her."  S-Magazine

— The Canadian Press and Alpine Canada contributed to this report

Zwiesel women's World Cup GS results