Lara Gut, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde win super-G World Cup titles
Gut overtakes injured Vonn with 2nd-place finish at St. Moritz
Lara Gut won the season-long women's super-G title on Thursday, finishing second behind Tina Weirather at the World Cup finals in St. Moritz and overtaking the injured Lindsey Vonn for the crystal globe.
The overall champion from Switzerland was only 19 points behind Vonn heading into the final race and needed to finish at least sixth to surpass the American, who injured her knee in a crash in a super-G in Andorra last month.
Gut finished 0.41 seconds behind Weirather on the Corviglia slope, with Cornelia Huetter third, 0.59 seconds off the pace.
Huetter finished fourth in the super-G standings, just behind Vonn, who was in St. Moritz after flying in to pick up her downhill title on Wednesday.
Canada's Marie-Michele Gagnon failed to finish the race and wound up 44th in the super-G season standings, where the top Canadian was 25th-place Larisa Yurkiw, who didn't compete Thursday.
It was a second super-G trophy for Gut after her triumph in the discipline two years ago.
Gut was more than a half second slower than Weirather at the halfway point, but she improved on the latter half of the slope to finish second.
Weirather recorded her second World Cup victory of the season. She won another super-G in La Thuile, Italy, on Feb. 21.
Seven skiers did not finish on the tricky course, including five of the first eight racers.
Kilde takes men's crown
Later, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde won the season-long men's super-G title after two of his challengers did not finish.
Five men were in contention for the crystal globe but Kilde finished second, 0.10 seconds behind Beat Feuz to remain top of the standings.
It was a second successive World Cup win for Feuz after the Swiss skier triumphed in Wednesday's downhill.
Olympic champion Kjetil Jansrud was also second, with the same time as Kilde, to finish runner-up in his title defense and ensure a Norwegian 1-2-3. Teammate Aksel Lund Svindal — who ended his season after knee surgery in January — finished third in the standings.
Canada's Erik Guay did not finish Thursday's race. Guay, who took bronze in the downhill held Wednesday, ended up 20th in the super-G standings.
It was a first crystal globe for the 23-year-old Kilde and comes in a discipline Norway has dominated, with its skiers winning six of the last seven Olympic super-G titles.
Kilde had 335 points heading into St. Moritz, followed by Svindal on 310, Vincent Kriechmayr of Austria on 298, and Jansrud on 295.
With a win worth 100 points, Andrew Weibrecht of the United States (91 points behind) and Carlo Janka of Switzerland (92) were also in with a mathematical chance.
However, Kriechmayr and Weibrecht missed a gate on the tricky Corviglia course meaning Kilde — who was the last of the title contenders to start — just needed to finish 10th to secure the title.
Kilde almost lost it midway down the course but recovered to arrive with the same time as Jansrud, punching the air in celebration after checking the clock.
With files from CBC Sports