Mancuso just misses podium in super combined

By USSA

MERIBEL, France — World Championship super G bronze medalist Julia Mancuso (Squaw Valley) ripped to second in the downhill half of Sunday’s super combined, but dropped to fourth overall after hooking up in the soft snow of the slalom portion.

Tina Maze of Slovenia took the win – her eighth on the season – to boost her World Cup point total to 1,844 and clinch the Audi FIS Alpine World Cup overall title a full three weeks before the end of the season.

Julia Mancuso

Austrians Nicole Hosp and Michaela Kirchgasser finished 2-3.

Laurenne Ross (Bend, Ore.) was 15th and Leanne Smith (N. Conway, N.H.) 26th. Stacey Cook (Mammoth Mountain) did not finish the downhill.

Heavy overnight snow forced the organizers to delay the start of the downhill and lower the start.

“In places we got like two feet of snow last night. It was really soft so those slalom athletes definitely had a good advantage with the lowered downhill start and the better start positions,” Mancuso said. “I didn’t make any mistakes in the downhill and that was my plan. I made too many yesterday, but it’s pretty hard to put any time on the slalom skiers. It seemed like we ran about half of the full length of the downhill.”