First gold medal for Anja Paerson.

Santa Caterina, Italy, Jan.30th - Sweden's Anja Paerson stormed to an unexpected World Championships gold medal today in the women's Super-G held by perfect weather conditions on Santa Caterina's demanding Deborah Compagnoni course.

The 23-year-old Paerson, already an outstanding technical skier so far, clinched her third gold medal in beating Italy's Lucia Recchia and American Julia Mancuso. In 2001, Anja won the slalom title in St Anton and then the giant slalom in 2003 in St Moritz. It's her very first victory in a speed event, and the first Super-G medal for Sweden ever.

Most of the top favourites had a much harder time. Austria's defending champion Michaela Dorfmeister, her teammate Renate Goetschl or American Lindsey Kildow were among those who struggled or failed to finish the race.

“This is unbelievable, I really hadn't counted on it,” said an elate Paerson after becoming Sweden's first ever World Champion in a speed event. “Before the race, the most I dared to imagine was a third place! I trained really well during the summer with the German team, and this is a great reward for all that work, but I never dreamed I could win a gold medal today. This is awesome.”

A demanding course

“The course was technically quite demanding at the top, so many skiers had problems to immediately find their best rhythm. There were some tricky turns in the first section so I guess that good GS skiers as Julia or myself had sort of an advantage. We were more focused and ready. But we were not the favourites today, so we didn't try as hard as the top specialists. It was easy to make a mistake today. I was moving all the time at my limits.”

The defending Overall World Cup champion is chasing Pernilla Wiberg's record of six gold medals won in three specialities from 1991 to 1999. In Maribor, she already equalled Pernilla's mark of 24 World Cup wins with her victory in slalom.

Anja, who grew up in the same town as Swedish all-time great Ingemar Stenmark, winner of a record 86 World Cup races from 1974 to 1989, is already looking for another great win in two years at the 2007 Worlds planned in Are, near Oestersund. “There, I want to win the downhill - this has been my greatest dream when I was a child,” she told in an interview with a Slovenian TV station.

“This year has been hard because I didn't win as many races as last winter, but I kept on fighting and believing in my chances to do well here,” Paerson added. “I was also quite unlucky in some races, also here by the way. I crashed in training giant slalom and I injured myself at my hip. It was painful for quite a long time and I didn't ski well at all in the next technical races. I only entered the first downhill but it was a good experience because we were able to check the snow.”

Skiing with much feelings

“The race conditions are quite special here - the snow is very aggressive and as dry as in the States, so you have to ski with much more feeling as usually. I had to adapt my technique to those different conditions. My serviceman at Salomon, who normally works with me, is sick, so we got the support from the technician of Christoph Gruber. He did a great job tuning my skis, preparing the edges in the best way so that my skis were not too aggressive on this snow. We also found a better angle for my boots which helped me to better curve - at the end, it was just a great team work.”

“I don't know about my entire program here - if I ski well in the downhill during the combined, I may take part in the real downhill afterwards. But you know, this is a tough course with some very fast parts where you ski at 140 km/h - this is a lot! But this success will certainly help me to better prepare the coming competitions. It should be fun - there are some great racing coming up and big fights with other skiers as Janica Kostelic, Tanja Poutiainen, Tina Maze of Renate Goetschl.”

Patrick Lang