ZWIESEL, Germany — Olympic champion Viktoria Rebensburg of Germany won a women’s World Cup giant slalom race Sunday, and World Cup leader Maria Riesch extended her lead on defending champion Lindsey Vonn.
Rebensburg clocked a combined time of 1 minute, 36.96 seconds. Federica Brignone of Italy earned second in 1:37.49, and Kathrin Zettel of Austria was third in 1:37.85.
Riesch placed 11th, 1.56 seconds behind Rebensburg. Vonn finished 18th and trails Riesch by 156 points in the overall standings.
The American returned to the slopes after sitting out Friday’s slalom after a crash in training two days earlier that resulted in a concussion.
“(Vonn skied) awesome in the steeps today; it was fantastic, actually,” U.S. women’s coach Alex Hoedlmoser said. “Then she started to back off a bit on that last break over.”
Julia Mancuso placed 21st for the U.S. and Vails Sarah Schleper was 25th in the race that was postponed from Saturday. Fog and wind delayed Sunday’s start by nearly three hours.
Austrian gets first career win
HINTERSTODER, Austria — Philipp Schoerghofer captured his first career victory by winning a World Cup giant slalom.
Schoerghofer clocked 2 minutes, 46.44 seconds to give Austria its second win in as many days. Kjetil Jansrud of Norway finished 0.17 behind. Defending overall champion Carlo Janka of Switzerland was another 0.03 back in third.
Bode Miller posted fast intermediate times but squandered a possible podium finish by making errors on the final section in both runs. He clocked the best second-run time to finish ninth, 0.57 behind Schoerghofer.
Ted Ligety, who leads the discipline standings by 26 points over Aksel Lund Svindal, trailed by 0.90 in 13th place. U.S. teammate Warner Nickerson finished 26th.
