Ester Ledecká: St. Moritz Disappointment | Snowboarding & Skiing News

The start was delayed for more than a quarter of an hour. The driving of the predecessors showed that one of the jumps could throw the competitor off the marked track, so the slope had to be modified.

Ledecká performed similarly to the descents. With number 13, a new member of the implementation team, former elite Italian downhiller Michael Mair, was with her at the start until the last moment. From the almost 1900 meters long track, she managed its end very well, but lost in the twistier middle part. Even her speed was not among the highest this time.

“I didn’t succeed, which I regret,” she admitted on Czech television. “I’m not exactly friends with St. Morice, the highest I was here was seventh, otherwise I usually just fit in the top 30. We have to work on it with the team,” she reminded. She became the world champion and vice-champion on the same slope this year, but on a snowboard.

At the same time, she managed the Rominger jump, which caused problems for the competitors and several female competitors. “The jump was already unpleasant in the downhill, where I had terribly long jumps. Now they let us onto it even straighter and we have much more speed. So I braked on top of it, but it was not nice to see the first rider in front, how he almost killed himself in the nets,” she admitted.

“At the start, we all looked at each other that it was going to be great. But I saw a lot of girls before my start, which reassured me that it would go well,” she described the situation before going on the track.

The winner of Saturday’s downhill, Emma Aicherová, did not reach the finish line this time, but after falling, the German was able to get back on her skis and ski down. Right after her, 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn started, the first and second of the downhills in St. Moritz.

The American, who returned last year after an almost six-year break and a partial knee replacement, performed another quality ride, but she did not reach her 141st podium in her career, she was eight hundredths short of it.

This time, the giant slalom specialist topped the downhill skiers. Alice Robinson has won all of her twenty podium positions so far in this discipline, but Sunday’s super-G suited the 24-year-old New Zealander the best. She had a lead of eight hundredths over Frenchwoman Romane Miradoliová.

The home Swiss women were absent among the best. Olympic champion in super-G Lara Gutová-Behramiová is out for the season after a knee injury, two-time Olympic combined champion Michelle Gisinová has already undergone wrist and cervical spine surgery after a fall in training in St. Moritz, and she is awaiting another operation on the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee.

The second Czech, Barbora Nováková, rode her first super-G in the World Cup at the age of 23 and finished 49th, the last of the downhillers to finish the race.

Before Christmas, the female downhill skiers will have two World Cup races next week in Val d’Isere. There is a downhill on Saturday, and a super-G on Sunday.