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Park City, women’s giant slalom
A dream came through for Birgit!
Birgit Heeb-Batliner is for sure a patient and a determined women – at 30 the leading skier from Liechtenstein finally celebrated her very first victory on the World Cup tour in the women’s giant slalom raced today at Park City, Utah. She beat by 6/100 the 1999 Overall World Cup champion Alexandra Meissnitzer from Austria – and a winner here in 1998 – and by 18/100 the triple Olympic Champion Janica Kostelic, the fastest women in the second run.
Sweden’s Anja Paerson, 2nd here last February at the Olympics, finished 4th ahead of Switzerland’s Sonja Nef, the defending World Cup champion while the 2002 Overall World Cup winner, Michaela Dorfmeister was a far 24th.
A strong performance for Janica Kostelic
Both Birgit and Alexandra definitely achieved a kind of a revenge in this intriguing race marked by several crashes in the morning – including the leading Norwegian Andrine Flemmen and Stina Nilsen, who crashed out at the exact same place than in February!
The former, 3rd here in 1998, fell nine months ago at the very last gate of the second run while the later missed a medal by a few tenths when she ended in 4th place!
They clearly dominated the first leg won by Meissnitzer with an advance of 6/100 on Heeb-Batliner while Nef was third at almost half a second behind.
Their advance allowed them to stay out of reach for the other favorites… expect the incredible Kostelic who crushed once more all her rivals in the second run. The young Croatian achieved another of her impressive dream-runs and moved up from 6th to 3rd place which allowed her to reach her first GS podium in a World Cup race!
Quite a strong performance for this racer who suffered once more from strong pains at her back before the first run. “I did better than I thought, I didn’t ski that good GS in training” she explained. “I’m pleased, no question about it!”
“I had an excellent second run, I was really relaxed. In the first run, I didn’t take risks after I was told that the course was in bad shape. I could have been much faster”.
Birgit was relaxed!
Birgit Heeb-Batliner also felt quite relaxed before the race – but for quite another reason. She crashed on her head while training before the start and for once she skied without thinking too much about her style or her technique.
“Normally I’m very anxious and reflecting a lot during the races, but this time I just let my skis go” she said after the race. “I guess that the pressure vanished after my accident!”
“It’s a great day for me after all these years of waiting. I went through a lot of ups and downs in my career but I always hoped to do it once. I trained well last summer with the Swiss team and Nordica produced some excellent GS skis too”.
“Being married for over a year helps also – I can better plan my life now and enjoy what I’m doing. I look forward for the Worlds at St Moritz – I heard that the course there is technically quite demanding, which is good for me. I found out that the last three gold medal winners in GS also won the race here at the start of the season – so why not?”
Meissnitzer is back!
But the happiest person on the podium was for sure Austria’s veteran Alexandra Meissnitzer who achieved a superb comeback three years after ger disastrous crash in Lake Louise while training Super-G.
The double World Champion from 1999 scored her best result since her accident and the series of knee surgeries which she faced afterwards.
“This 2nd place makes me as happy as my victory here in 1998” she said with a great smile. “It has been such a long wait – and so many people believed that I couldn’t return at the top. It was really hard, but I felt I can make it when I finished twice 4th at the Olympics here”.
“Last summer I was finally able to train as hard as the rest of the team and this boosted my moral. I had a bad start at Soelden but here I handle the pressure much better. Now I can rebuilt something from this! I also aim for some good results in Super-G and a medal at St Moritz!”
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