Gut underlines Olympic super-G ambitions

Swiss Lara Gut underlined her Olympic super-G title ambitions by claiming her third World Cup win of the season in the discipline at Cortina d'Ampezzo on Sunday. The 22-year-old, a super-G winner at Beaver Creek and Lake Louise in December, put behind her a series of disappointing results lately to clock a winning time of 1min 27.81sec on the Olympia delle Tofane course. Liechtenstein's Tina Weirather was second at 0.12secs with Germany's Maria Hoefl-Riesch extending her overall World Cup lead by finishing third at 0.61. In near perfect racing conditions Verena Stuffer raised home hopes of a first ever World Cup podium place when she clocked the fastest provisional time with bib number three. However the Italian eventually finished fourth when Hoefl-Riesch, who recovered from a major mistake on a right turn near the bottom of the course, finished seven hundredths of a second faster. Slovenian Tina Maze was also in the mix, the defending World Cup champion following up her maiden win of the season in Saturday's downhill with a promising fifth place at 0.72. Elisabeth Goergl, meanwhile, was the top Austrian in sixth place but at 0.82 behind Gut, while American Julia Mancuso continued her struggle for form less than three weeks before the Sochi Games. Mancuso, a double silver medal winner in the super-combined and downhill at the Vancouver Games in 2010, finished in 15th place at 1.91 behind Gut. Source: AFP