Federica Brignone gave it all out in the second run to finally secure her first World Cup victory of the season. She finished in a combined time of 2:12.59 to beat Mina Fuerst Holtmann by 0.04 seconds. Wendy Holdener was third (+0.44) with Petra Vlhova and Viktoria Rebensburg tied in fourth by +0.48.
"I knew I could not even spare one turn in the second run,” Brignone said after the race. “I tried to come from the back because it was a little bit bumpier in the second run. I tried to arc every single turn".
Brignone’s winning margin of just 0.04 seconds makes the second podium in the last handful of days for the Italian that was decided by the blink of an eye. This time, however, she was on the winning side of it."It’s pretty nice to win!" she admitted. "As I said in St. Moritz if someone is faster than you, they are faster than you, one hundredth or 20 hundredths. When you’re skiing good, they come and they go the hundredths. The key is just to try, always. To make the difference today, we had to really push".It was Brignone's 11th career World Cup win and sixth in GS, but first in more than a year. In previous World Cup events, Brignone had twice second place in the Killington Giant and last weekend in Sankt Moritz in Super-G won by her teammate, Sofia Goggia. Thanks to the result of Courchevel, she rose momentarily to the first place in the Giant Slalom standing.
Mina Fuerst Holtmann (NOR) stepped on a World Cup podium for the first time, in her third year on the circuit. It's not a special day just for the Norwegian skier but also for Wendy Holdener (SUI) who trailed Brignone by 0.44 in third for her first career podium in the discipline. Overall leader Mikaela Shiffrin (USA) failed to match the pace of the leading racers in both runs and finished 1.65 behind in 17th.
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