Holdener Wins Lenzerheide Alpine Combined

Wendy Holdener of Switzerland, the defending alpine combined world champion, has been gunning for a victory all season with five podiums but no first place results until the tour rolled into Lenzerheide. In front of the Swiss crowd, Holdener claimed her first win of the 2017/18 winter with a blazing slalom run following a commendable finish in the super-G.

Holdener bested Marta Bassino by 1.55 seconds as the Italian, who has three GS podiums on her resume, secured her first ever alpine combined podium finish in second place. Ana Bucik of Slovenia, who finished the super-G in 30th and therefore started the slalom run first, held the Audi leader seat through the majority of the second run and moved up 27 positions. She ultimately finished the race just 0.01 seconds behind Bassino for her career-first World Cup podium. 

Lindsey Vonn skied the fastest super-G run in the morning and skied into fourth place overall. Nevena Ignjatovic of Serbia moved up 18 positions with her slalom run to finish a career-best sixth. 

“I think I skied pretty well,” Vonn said. “It’s good to get another run of super-G before the Olympics, and also for the slalom portion, its good for me to get some practice as well.”

Vonn spent the past few days testing equipment and training super-G and giant slalom in Folgaria, Italy with Andrew Weibrecht and Ted Ligety. Friday’s event served more as an Olympic tune-up to see how her body would respond to slalom, a discipline she hasn’t trained since last month.

“I’ve won slalom World Cups before, but I haven’t really trained (slalom) at all since Christmas … so that’s why I’m starting, so I can see how it feels for the Olympics and know how much I need to improve if I want to get a medal.

“If I can get a good advantage in the speed portion, and have a solid slalom run, I think I can be on the podium,” Vonn said of her Olympic alpine combined aspirations.