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Flury upstages favourites to win world downhill gold / Photo: © AFP
Flury upstages favourites to win world downhill gold
Swiss outsider Jasmine Flury made the most of her early bib number to bag gold in the women's downhill at the World Ski Championships on Saturday as hot favourite Sofia Goggia was disqualified.
Flury, starting second in brilliant sunshine and rapidly rising temperatures, clocked 1min 28.03sec down the Roc de Fer piste in the French resort of Meribel.
"It's amazing, unreal," said the 29-year-old Flury, who has one World Cup super-G victory to her name, from St Moritz in 2017, and just one other podium finish on the circuit, a second place in last month's Garmisch downhill.
Austrian Nina Ortlieb, whose father Patrick won the world downhill title in 1996 as well as Olympic gold in Val d'Isere in 1992, claimed silver at 0.04sec, with Switzerland's reigning world and Olympic champion Corinne Suter taking bronze a further eight-hundredths adrift.
There was no dream outing for Goggia, however, with all eyes on the Italian star who is the Olympic silver medallist having bagged gold in the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, and is currently leading this season's World Cup downhill standings having also won the downhill crystal globe in three of the last five seasons.
Goggia badly negotiated a landing off a jump and straddled a gate. She was left incredulous and stockstill in the finish area, her team writhing with angst at seeing their star racer go out.
Racing after the death this week of former teammate, Elena Fanchini after a long battle with cancer, the Italian team donned black armbands in her honour.
But they misfired on the piste, first with Goggia and then Elena Curtoni, Laura Pirovano and Nicol Delago. The quartet came together for an emotional minute's silence for Fanchini after the race.
The top 11 racers all finished within one second of each other, two-time world champion Ilka Stuhec of Slovenia unable to match her efforts from 2017 and 2019 as she came sixth (+0.42), behind Austrian pair Cornelia Huetter and Mirjam Puchner in equal fourth (+0.37).
Another of the big favourites, Lara Gut-Behrami, a three-time medallist in the world downhill (one silver, two bronze), finished 0.71 off the pace and could only look on as her unheralded Swiss teammate topped the podium.
B.Johnson--SFF
