On a challenging course set by the International Ski Federation’s Alberto Senigagliesi, 17 of the 45 starters failed to finish and it wasn’t until the fifth skier, Austria’s Ramona Siebenhofer, that a racer reached the finish area without making major errors.
Gut-Behrami started with bib No. 7 and had an adventurous and imperfect run. She had her right ski in the air at one point on the full-length top section, and almost missed the difficult blue control gate following the jump into the Eisfall.
But impressive recoveries allowed to her to maintain her speed, and she refocused to post the best combined time in the last two sectors of the course and ski into first place.
“On the flat part I made a lot of mistakes and I never expected to be that fast,” the 31-year-old said.
“The last part I tried to ski clean and let the ski go. I’m not so happy with the top (section) but I’m happy with the result.”
With her 36th World Cup victory in all disciplines, Gut-Behrami joined Germany’s Katja Seizinger in equal eighth place on the all-time women’s list, and also reached the 70th World Cup podium of her storied career.
