04 MAR 2001 > Men's Super G
Maier Keeps Rolling the Dice
Race Results

Hermann Maier set a personal record today in winning his 11th World Cup race this season at Kvitfjell, Norway, in the fifth super G of the season.

Maier had never won more than 10 World Cup races in one season. Now he is chasing the record of Sweden's legendary Ingemar Stenmark, who celebrated 13 successes during the 1979 season.

Maier, the new 2001 Overall World Cup champion, beat Hannes Trinkl, the downhill World Champion after St. Anton, by 6/100 of a second. Stephan Eberharter, winner of the downhill on Saturday, was 3rd at 84/100 of a second behind Maier.

"I didn't hope to win two races here, especially not the first downhill..."

Maier also clinched his 10th Crystal globe in this competition — and his fourth consecutive super G title— nice revenge after his disappointing performance at the World Championships in St. Anton a month ago.

In his five seasons on the World Cup tour, Maier, from Flachau, Austria, has won 39 events (40 if you count the giant slalom at Val d'Isère in December 1997 where he was disqualified after taking his skis off too early after crossing the finish line). Only three skiers have done better: Stenmark reached 86 career victories; Alberto Tomba, 50; and, Switzerland's Pirmin Zurbriggen, 40. Zurbriggen's accomplishment took 10 seasons — twice as many as "The Herminator."

"I'm really pleased by my season despite my problems at St. Anton, where I was not so lucky with the weather and the racing conditions," Maier said. "I didn't hope to win two races here, especially not the first downhill. It's just too bad that I lost this ski at Garmisch in the downhill. I could have won both races in Germany that weekend. I lost the super G the following day by only 1/100 of a second against Christoph Gruber. So I could have already won 41 races in total. The course here was fortunately quite demanding; it helped me to win despite a slow start."

The day was not so good for USA's Daron Rahlves, who wanted to repeat his superb success from St. Anton. He had an excellent start and was faster than Maier at the first intermediate time before straddling a gate with his right ski and hand. He didn't fall, though he slightly injured his arm.

It's a tough mistake for Rahlves, from Truckee, California, who has been hammered by bad luck since the first day here. On Friday, he was disqualified in the first downhill for putting a knot at his racing bib because it was too large for him and then on Saturday he was only 9th in the second downhill.

"I have now lived some of the most exciting and some of the worse moments in my career," Rahlves said. "I felt really great at the beginning of the run until this mistake. It's too bad, but I had to take all risks to win that race. I was pretty confident, and I hope to reach some better results next week in Are."

His teammate Paul Casey Puckett was 34th while Chad Fleischer and Christopher Puckett didn't finish the race.

The finals will begin this week with the speed events on Wednesday and Thursday for women and men followed by the technical races over the weekend.

Half of the World Cup title races are still open, including for the women's overall and downhill. Austria's Renate Goetschl, last year's overall women's champion, is a contender along with Croatia's Janica Kostelic, France's Régine Cavagnoud, and Italy's Isolde Kostner.

— Patrick Lang, World Cup Correspondent

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