Ramona Siebenhofer led the third and final training session for the World Cup downhill event on Tuesday. She finished 0.07 seconds ahead of her Austrian teammate Stephanie Venier and 0.24 seconds ahead of Tamara Tippler. This marks Siebenhofer’s first career win.
The downhill race was scheduled for later on Tuesday. Ester Ledecka, a skier-snowboarder, placed seventh after leading the second training session on Monday. Nicole Schmidhofer, another Austrian skier who won the first two downhills of the season in Lake Louise, finished in 21st place.
Siebenhofer’s previous podium finish in a downhill race was three years ago in Lake Louise. She also led the first training session on Monday. A super-G race in Val Gardena is set to take place on Wednesday.
Originally, the races were supposed to be held in Val d’Isere over the weekend, but due to lack of snow, they were moved to Val Gardena. The French resort had very little to no snow at all.
For the first time, the Saslong course will not host the women’s World Cup races. The course, known for its challenging features like camel bump jumps, was shortened and some technical sections were excluded for the women’s event.
