Italy’s Sofia Goggia won her first race of the season since her comeback from an ankle injury which caused her to miss the start of the season. However, Goggia didn’t let that stop her, winning the ladies’ downhill at Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on Saturday.
Sofia Goggia clocked in at one minute, 29.77 seconds. Joana Haehlen came in second place, 0.36 seconds behind the Italian. Haehlen unfortunately missed out on the typical finish line issue, due to timekeeping issues that didn’t make her run time immediately available.
Nicole Schmidhofer had ‘unofficially’ rounded up the top three, while officials had to check and verify the race times for athletes who were affected by the timekeeping issues. Switzerland’s Lara Gut-Behrami was unofficially in fourth place prior to the check, however after officials made their verifications, Gut-Behrami was then confirmed as the final podium athlete in third place, while Schmidhofer was verified in fourth place.
Logines, who is the Official Partner and Timekeeper of FIS, and Swiss Timing, released the following statement on the hiccup:
“There were unfortunately timekeeping issues at the Audi FIS World Cup ladies’ downhill race in Crans Montana (SUI). The problem was due to connection issues between the infrastructure installed on the finish line and the timekeeping room. Consequently, the electronic timekeeping did not stop the finish time automatically for some of the competitors.
Longines, Official Partner and Timekeeper of the FIS, and Swiss Timing, in charge of operations on site, are currently investigating the facts of this incident and will take on board fully the findings of this enquiry.
Despite the fact that the results were not displayed accurately in the finish area or on television, a manual backup timing system was used for the athletes that were affected as per FIS rules.
As a result of implementing the manual backup system, the top three finishers of today’s downhill race are: First place, Sofia Goggia (ITA); second place, Joana Haehlen (SUI); third place, Lara Gut-Behrami (SUI).
Longines and Swiss Timing are very disappointed by this incident and wish to apologize to the athletes, organizers and spectators.”
All in all, it was a great race, with Italy’s Sofia Goggia being rewarded for taking an aggressively direct racing line. World champion Ilka Stuhec had suffered a crash before the race, leaving Goggia as the favourite to win – and she did not disappoint!
Head to the FIS-SKI results page for the official results, and stay tuned for our blog for more updated on skiing!