13th place for Janica Kostelic in Cortina d'Ampezzo

Janica Kostelic only reached a rather disappointing 13th place in the first Super-G race held on the superb “Olimpia-Tofana” course in Cortina d'Ampezzo. It's her worst result here since finishing 31st in January 1999! She always finished among the top-10 in the following Super-G competitions including a 4th place in January 2002!

She lost 1,02 seconds on the winner, her good friend Renate Goetschl. In Lake Louise, Janica was 5th and 6th later on in Altenmarkt. In St Moritz, she had to be content with her 16th place.

As Anja Paerson came in an excellent 2nd, Janica remained 3rd in the Overall World Cup standings, 73 points behind Tanja Poutiainen who doesn't compete in Italy, and 26 points behind Paerson.

Big mistake at the top

Janica, who made a major mistake in the upper part of the course losing half a second on Goetschl, didn't find back the best rhythm in the lower part where she didn't ski as aggressively as the other top contenders. Obviously, the triple Olympic Champion was expecting more from her day and she was not happy at all by her result.
“It's one of my preferred courses with Park City and I felt ready to achieve a much better result,” she said afterwards. ”I didn't push hard enough this time. It's too bad. But I'm not surprised at all by Anja's strong race, it's a good course for an aggressive and skilled GS skier. She has a solid technique and she went for it. Good for her! Let's hope for better races in the next days.” She also said she was not bothered by her painful knee.

The skier from Zagreb was also handicapped by a reduced vision. She is utilizing new lenses for her eyes but since she needs a full week to get perfectly used to them, she preferred not to put them on for this race. It may have prevented her to perfectly judge the difficulties of the course.

Manuèle Lang