American Olympic giant slalom skiing champion Julia Mancuso (Olympic Valley, CA), healthy after a weekend stomach illness, earned her first World Cup ski racing victory Tuesday, winning a downhill with teammate Lindsey Kildow (Vail, CO) in third place.
Racing in sunny, 15-degree weather, Mancuso tore down the 2.5K Oreiller Killy track to finish in 1:38.93 with Renate Goetchl of Austria in second place at 1:39.36. Kildow, who won here a year ago with Caroline Lalive (Steamboat Springs, CO) in second place, completed the podium in 1:39.47 for the 51st running of Val d'Isere's Criterium of the First Snow.
"I thought I had a pretty sweet run but you never really know. In ski racing you never really know," Mancuso said. As she waited in the race-leader box at the finish, she said, "I kept telling myself, ‘Get it over with'...Renate and Lindsey had leading splits up top, but then they had a bobble or something toward the bottom, so that made this pretty sweet...
Mancuso: "I'm finally ‘there'..."
"For me, it's kind of like I'm finally ‘there.' It was tough in the beginning of the season. I was having a hard time racing, and even if I didn't win, if I had a full run and felt super confident, that would have been good. But I nailed the top and I felt strong," she said.
Said U.S. Ski Team DH Head Coach Alex Hoedlmoser, "Jules was on a mission today. It was like she had the devil on her back...and now Lindsey's going to be on a mission tomorrow" in the second downhill on the speed run named for two French Olympic gold medalists.
Mancuso, rebounding this season after hip surgery in the summer to repair chronic problems, led from the first timing split (0.28 seconds ahead) at about 20 seconds into the race, added a half-second by the second split (0.79), more than a second (1.23) at the third split, dipped a bit (1.14) at the fourth split, added nearly three-tenths - racing at 75 miles an hour (120.4kph) as she stormed toward the finish. She was 1.52 seconds ahead of then-leader (and Val d'Isere native) Ingrid Jacquemod when she crossed the line.
"It's a pretty dynamic course," Mancuso explained. "There are tons of rolls and it's pretty fast in certain sections, so I was going for it. It's very technical and you need to be clean and smooth...
"[Monday] in the training run, I didn't ski great in the second half but on top I was pretty good. There's one turn going into the Meadows [midrace] that you had to nail, and I guess I nailed it and carried my speed down through. I was up over my skis, like I couldn't feel the snow...
