Next weekend the Women's Alpine Skiing World Cup goes to Val di Fassa, to the Ski Area San Pellegrino.
On Saturday and Sunday, February 24-25, the slope La VolatA in the ski area San Pellegrino will host two Super-G races.
Val di Fassa (ITA)
February 24th Super-G / Women 11:00 CET
February 25th Super-G / Women 11:00 CET
La VolatA Super-G racecourse facts:
Start Elevation: 2395 m
Finish Elevation: 1880 m
Vertical Drop: 515 m
Length: 1750 m
Max. slope: 47 %
Average slope: 28 %
Val di Fassa is ready to enter the world of top-class skiing: an opportunity to show its connection with alpine skiing, first as a resort that is part of the biggest ski domain in Europe, the Dolomiti Superski, and then also as a destination whose sports story starts back in 1988, when the champion Alberto Tomba began to train here with his coach Flavio Roda (now FISI president). A story that was reinforced in 2001 with the first of 28 European Cup races and then in 2006 with the beginning of the Piste Azzurre project, which entitled the valley as the training center of the Italian National team, passing through the extraordinary experience of the 2019 World Junior Alpine Skiing Championships, whose closing ceremony also took place on February 27th. More than 80 international FIS races have been hosted here till nowadays.
The new racecourse called Pista La VolatA is a steep, fast run, featuring a continuous series of spine-tingling walls with gradients of up to 50%, for a total length of 2400 m and 630 m of altitude drop. This slope hosted the Downhill and Giant Slalom races in the FIS Val di Fassa 2019 Junior Alpine Skiing World Championships.
In 2021, after winning in Cortina the world titles in the Super-G and Giant slalom and the bronze medal in the Downhill, Lara Gut-Behrami won the first race after the World Champs in Val di Fassa. She finished ahead of Austrian Ramona Siebenhofer and teammate Corinne Suter.
A day after, Lara Gut-Behrami continued her amazing speed streak, with her second straight victory in Downhill in Val Di Fassa. Corinne Suter finished in second place. Third place went to German Kira Weidle.
In 2021, on the last day in the Italian ski resort, Federica Brignone beat Lara Gut-Behrami and claimed victory in the Super-G in Val di Fassa. Gut-Behrami’s teammate Corinne Suter also capped a fantastic weekend, earning her third podium in as many races with her third-place finish.
Super-G Preview
After the Super-G race in Crans Montana, and with four more Super-G races on the calendar, the fight for the discipline Crystal Globe is getting super close with Lara Gut-Behrami leading the standings with 360 points, Cornelia Hütter is second with 355, Federica Brignone is third with 326, and Stephanie Venier fourth with 266.
Stephanie Venier earned in Crans Montana her maiden World Cup win in the Super-G, seven years after her first podium in the discipline in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
It's the third victory in the Alpine Ski World Cup for Venier and her 11th podium. Venier became the 19th Austrian to win a Super-G race in the World Cup. The Tirolean is also the first Austrian to win a Super-G event in Crans Montana.
Lara Gut-Behrami won the World Cup Super-G held in Cortina d'Ampezzo on January 29, 2023. It's her third victory in the Super-G in the Olympia delle Tofane (2014, 2018, and 2024). She also won the second Super-G held in Zauchensee.
Gut-Behrami is the first woman to win successive World Cup Super-G races since she won four in a row herself in 2021: St. Anton, Crans Montana, and Garmisch-Partenkirchen (2).
Lindsey Vonn (28) is the only female skier to have celebrated as many Super-G World Cup victories as Gut-Behrami (21).
Gut-Behrami won the last Super-G of the 2022-2023 season at the Finals in Soldeu and grabbed the Crystal Globe. It was the fourth time that the 32-year-old Swiss has won the Super-G Crystal Globe after winning the title of the speed discipline in 2013-2014, 2015-2016, and 2020-2021. Only Katja Seizinger and Lindsey Vonn, five times each, have won the Super-G Crystal Globe more times.z
Cornelia Hütter won the first Super-G held in Zauchensee and gave Austria the first-season victory in the Women's Alpine Ski World Cup. She finished ahead of Kajsa Vickhoff Lie (+0.09) and Lara Gut-Behrami (+0.21). It was her fifth World Cup victory and the fourth in a Super-G.
Hütter achieved in the second Super-G held in Zauchensee her fourth podium of the season, the third one in the Super-G. She finished 25 times on the podium in the Alpine Ski World Cup.
Federica Brignone won the second Super-G of the season held in the Oreiller-Killy course at La Daille in Val d'Isère. The 33-year-old set the best time in a challenging course setting to take the victory with a lead of 0.44 seconds over Kajsa Vickhoff Lie. Sofia Goggia rounded out the podium 0.59 seconds behind Brignone.
Last season, Federica Brignone finished in second place in the discipline standings.
With 9 wins in her career, Brignone is aiming to become the seventh woman to win at least 10 World Cup Super-G races, following Lindsey Vonn (28), Lara Gut-Behrami (20), Renate Götschl (17), Katja Seizinger (16), Carole Merle (12), and Michaela Dorfmeister (10).
Brignone is joint-second alongside Gustav Thöni and Sofia Goggia (24) for most World Cup wins by an Italian alpine skier, behind only Alberto Tomba (50).
25-year-old Kajsa Vickhoff Lie could become the fourth woman representing Norway to achieve a World Cup victory in the Super-G, after Merete Fjeldavlie (1992), Ingeborg Helen Marken (1996) and Ragnhild Mowinckel (2022 and 2023).
Lie's podium in Zauchensee was her third one in the Super-G in the World Cup. She is looking for her first victory in the discipline after winning her first World Cup Downhill in Kvitfjell last March.
Mirjam Puchner finished on the podium, in third position, in the second Super-G held in Zauchensee. It's her 7th podium in the Alpine Ski World Cup.
Ragnhild Mowinckel rounded out the podium in the last race of the season in Soldeu, her 13th World Cup podium, in third place +0.47 seconds behind the Swiss, and finished in third place in the discipline standings. In a neat image of symmetry, Soldeu's Gut-Behrami-Brignone-Mowinckel race podium matched the Crystal Globe podium.
Two of her four World Cup wins were in Super-G: Courchevel-Meribel on March 17, 2022, and Cortina d'Ampezzo on January 22, 2023.
Marta Bassino is the current Super-G world champion. On February 8, 2023, in Courchevel-Méribel, she won her second World Champion title (she won gold at the Parallel in Cortina 2021). Bassino finished ahead of Mikaela Shiffrin (silver), Cornelia Hütter, and Kajsa Vickhoff Lie (shared bronze medal).
Bassino has yet to win a Super-G event at the World Cup. She finished on the podium five times, with two second places (Bansko 2020, and St. Anton 2021), and three third places (St. Anton 2023, Cortina d'Ampezzo 2023, and Crans Montana 2024).
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