CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) \u2014 If Swiss skier Priska Nufer was going to have a breakout success at age 30, it surely was going to be on home snow at Crans-Montana.<\/p>\n
Nufer won a World Cup downhill on Sunday \u2014 her first podium place in close to 150 races \u2014 finishing just ahead of three Olympic gold medalists.<\/p>\n
In a 10-year World Cup career, Nufer never finished in the top five of any race until placing fourth in a downhill Saturday on the same Mont Lachaux course where she thrives.<\/p>\n
With victory Sunday, she now has eight career top-10 finishes in World Cup races and six have been at Crans-Montana.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am so thankful for this moment,\u201d Nufer said. \u201cAlso in Switzerland, (near) by my home town and with all the friends and family.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a sun-bathed south-facing slope, Nufer was 0.11 seconds faster than Ester Ledecka, the 2018 Olympics super-G champion who won the downhill on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Sofia Goggia was third, 0.23 behind Nufer, and new Olympic downhill champion Corinne Suter was fourth, 0.27 back.<\/p>\n
Goggia took downhill silver when defending her 2018 Olympic title in a rapid comeback from knee and leg injuries sustained crashing in January. Until then, she had dominated the downhill season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty much satisfied about what I did today,\u201d said Goggia, \u201cskiing at 70% or maybe a little bit less of the Sofia I was showing off in the first part of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goggia extended her lead over Suter in the season-long downhill standings with one race left, on March 16 at Courchevel, France, during the World Cup finals meet.<\/p>\n
Mikaela Shiffrin had a small lead in the World Cup overall standings before the Olympics and took a calculated risk that paid off to skip the back-to-back downhills at Crans-Montana.<\/p>\n
The American star\u2019s rival for the overall title, defending champion Petra Vlhova, posted a 16th-place finish Sunday to follow 29th a day earlier. They are now tied in the standings.<\/p>\n
Shiffrin should return when the women\u2019s circuit stays in Switzerland next weekend for super-G and giant slalom races at Lenzerheide.<\/p>\n
Though Nufer went to the Beijing Olympics, she was not selected in the four-woman Swiss team for the downhill or super-G speed races. They were won by Nufer\u2019s teammates Suter and Lara Gut-Behrami, respectively.<\/p>\n
Gut-Behrami, who failed to finish on Saturday, placed 19th Sunday more than one second behind Nufer.<\/p>\n
Wearing start bib No. 37, American Isabella Wright got a career-best 10th-place finish, trailing by 0.55.<\/p>\n
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CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland (AP) \u2014 If Swiss skier Priska Nufer was going to have a breakout success at age 30, it surely was going to be on home snow at Crans-Montana. Nufer won a World Cup downhill on Sunday \u2014 her first podium place in close to 150 races \u2014 finishing just ahead of three Olympic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-185390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}