Janica Kostelic 2nd in Sansicario

Sansicario, Italy, Feb. 26th - Janica Kostelic, who started in 22nd position, had to wait for almost half an hour before finding out if she would win or not her first World Cup downhill since Anja started in 34th place. “It was an exciting race, I skied pretty well, and I was quite nervous while I waited at the finish area,” said afterwards the triple World Champion from Santa Caterina.

“I achieved a good run, but Anja an even better one, but that's fine, I expected her to fight hard today after winning the Super-G yesterday. I'm really pleased by my downhill season, it was my goal to improve my level in the speed events and I reached more than I thought. I feel more comfortable right now in downhill than in giant slalom.”

Interestingly enough, Janica scored more points this season in downhill that in any other specialty - 337, 17 more than in slalom, and 157 more than in giant slalom, her weakest discipline this winter. The downhill World Champion reached the best 10 in the last five World Cup downhills, which allows her to be in 5th place in the downhill standings, only 130 points behind the leader, her friend Renate Goetschl.
On the other hand, she is 73 points ahead of the 2002 Olympic Champion, Carole Montillet-Carles from France!

“I'll try hard to beat her in the combined tomorrow but I don't know how this new combined will turn out for me,” she also said. “There is only one slalom run and I often don't ski so well in first slalom runs. So it will be important to be very fast in the downhill part. But I'm having a great time, I think we will battle for the Overall title until the last race in Lenzerheide and this is fun too.”

“I'm happy for Anja that she managed to win races in four events so quickly she did a great job. I'll try my best to achieve the same performance in the coming years. It's definitely a major goal yet the most important for me is still to have fun skiing and to enjoy the competition. Anja and I are having a great time, we fight hard to beat the other one when we compete but we are good friends before and after the races. This rivalry makes everything more interesting for us and the women's tour.”

Patrick Lang