.jpg?trim=76,0,399,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "The women ready to take up arms to defend Finland – UK Times")
Italian Alpine skier Sofia Goggia secured her fifth crystal globe and first in super-G as she won the final women’s World Cup speed race of the season.
Victory in Kvitfjell, Norway was Goggia’s third super-G win of the season, and achieved in her trademark attacking, aggressive style.
She finished in the top-10 of all eight races, including two podium finishes outside her three wins.
Switzerland’s Corinne Suter was second on Sunday, 0.32s slower, with German Kira Weidle-Winkelmann third for the second race of the weekend.
Goggia said: “If you want to be a complete speed skier, you have to get both the globes in downhill and super-G, and today I finally did it and I can say I’m a little bit more complete.”
Germany’s Emma Aicher finished fourth, 0.01s slower than her teammate, and remains in the hunt for the overall crystal globe after a stunning breakthrough season.
The 22-year-old cut American great Mikaela Shiffrin’s overall World Cup lead to 45 points with two races remaining next week – a giant slalom and slalom, the latter Shiffrin’s best discipline, worth a total of 200 points.
Shiffrin, the most successful World Cup skier of all time, has already won her ninth slalom crystal globe and is chasing a sixth overall World Cup title to cap a remarkable season in which she also won Olympic slalom gold.
The American failed to score in the super-G after finishing 22nd, with only the top 15 scoring at World Cup finals. She now has 1,286 points to rival Aicher’s 1,241.
Goggia competed before her closest rival, New Zealander Alice Robinson, who started the day 63 points off the pace and left the start hut already knowing her chances of overhauling the Italian had all but gone.
Robinson then narrowly avoided missing a gate and finished 2.41 seconds slower than Goggia, ultimately finishing 16th on the day and 163 points behind.
She remained second overall with Aicher third in the final super-G standings.
Goggia, the 2018 downhill Olympic champion, has now won five career crystal globes – the others all in downhill.
It was her 29th World Cup win and continued a triumphant weekend for Italy, with Laura Pirovano winning Saturday’s downhill to take that crystal globe while Dominik Paris was the men’s race winner.
28-year-old Pirovano has been a revelation in the latter half of this season; she had never finished on a World Cup podium until earlier in March but won three downhills in succession to finish 83 points clear of second-placed Aicher.
Pirovano beat Olympic and world champion Breezy Johnson by 0.15 seconds on Saturday, while Weidle-Winkelmann took third.
The men race their final super-G later, with Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt having already clinched that Crystal Globe as well as the overall title.
Additional reporting by Reuters
