Saturday 7 March 2015 14:02, UK
The battle for the Overall World Cup title reached boiling point on Saturday when Anna Fenninger closed the gap on leader Tina Maze by finishing second to Tina Weirather in the women’s downhill in Germany.
Fenninger is now just 24 points adrift of Maze who managed to limit the damage by finishing in third spot at Garmisch, some 0.40s behind her big rival for the title.
For Weirather, it was the fourth race victory of her World Cup career and first at downhill and the 25-year-old from Liechtenstein said: "I've had a soft spot for Garmisch since I first raced the course after injury which forced me to miss the 2011 World Championships here.
"There are about 200 fans for me here, which is really nice, but made me a bit nervous, so I'm really happy with how it went.”
Weirather covered the three kilometre Kandahar course 0.91s clear of Austria’s Fenninger who admitted: "There is a lot of tension, which you can take as a positive thing. It's better than if I had no chance at all."
And Slovenian Maze added: "Anna skis much too well right now. But I'll keep fighting until the end.”
American Lindsey Vonn, winner here in 2009, 2010 and 2012, could only finish seventh but remains top of the downhill rankings with a 35-point lead over Fenninger and 96 ahead of Maze.
The women’s season concludes with races at Are in Sweden and Meribel in France.
Meanwhile, Austrian Hannes Reichelt won the men’s downhill race at Kvitfjell in Norway, edging out Manuel Osborne-Paradis of Canada by just 0.30s over the 2.6km Olympiabakken piste.
It was his fourth success of the season and 11th of his World Cup career.
Norwegian Kjetil Jansrud, who leads the downhill standings, finished seventh as 22 racers posted times within a second of winner Reichelt.
Jansrud, with 505 points, is now just 20 ahead of Reichelt while Austrian Marcel Hirscher leads the Overall list with 1,128.
