(Reuters) – Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt took his third super-G win of the season on Saturday when he was fastest down the slopes of Cortina D’Ampezzo in Italy, beating Norwegian rival Aleksander Aamodt Kilde by a little more than a third of a second.
Odermatt was back on the slopes after having missed the giant slalom in Schladming last week due to a troublesome left knee.
The season has been so far been mostly a duel between the Swiss and the Norwegian, and the race down the famous Olympia delle Tofane track was no exception.
Odermatt, the reigning World Cup champion and current leader, finished 0.35 seconds ahead of Kilde, with Italian Mattia Casse, grabbing third place, 0.49 seconds behind Odermatt.
“I really didn’t expect it like that. I wasn’t sure how much I could go to the limit today and as well while racing (I) didn’t feel like going to the limit actually. I just tried to ski clean and gain confidence gate by gate and it worked,” Odermatt said.
The 25-year-old Odermatt now has 1286 points in the World Cup standings, 213 points ahead of Kilde before Sunday’s second Cortina D’Ampezzo super-G race.
(Reporting by Tommy Lund in Gdansk; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
