(Reuters) – Italy’s reigning champion Sofia Goggia won a women’s World Cup downhill in 2026 Olympic venue Cortina d’Ampezzo on Friday as record-chasing American Mikaela Shiffrin finished off the podium.
Goggia, the 2018 Olympic champion and 2022 silver medallist, beat Slovenia’s Ilke Stuhec by 0.13 seconds down the Italian resort’s glistening Olympia delle Tofane piste with Germany’s Kira Weidle third.
The win was Goggia’s fourth in five downhill races this season and came despite the Italian breaking two fingers in St Moritz last month.
Shiffrin was 21st out of the hut and made a storming start, faster than Goggia through the first three sectors but ended up fourth, and 0.50 slower, after fading towards the finish.
The four times overall World Cup champion equalled retired compatriot Lindsey Vonn’s women’s record of 82 World Cup wins earlier this month and also has a downhill and Super-G in Cortina at the weekend.
Friday was the first of seven races in 10 days across four disciplines for the American who is four wins short of Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark’s overall record of 86 World Cup victories from the 1970s and 1980s.
Switzerland’s Corinne Suter, the reigning Olympic downhill champion, crashed heavily as watching rivals gasped in shock at the finish area but was able to get back on her feet and ski down the slope.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Toby Davis)
