Rienda Contreras sets pace
ByReuters
Published 25/10/2003 at 07:00 GMT
Spain's Maria Jose Rienda Contreras set the fastest pace in the first leg of the Alpine ski World Cup season-opening giant slalom on Saturday, just ahead of Germany's Martina Ertl. The Spaniard, who has never won a World Cup race let alone made the podium
Eurosport
Image credit: Eurosport
Ertl, a winner here on the Rettenbach glacier three years ago, swooped into second place just 0.04 seconds behind the Spaniard.
World and World Cup giant slalom champion Anja Paerson of Sweden set herself up with a good attacking position for the second leg, which starts at 1030 GMT. Paerson was in third place, 0.37 seconds adrift of the pace.
Rienda Contreras is not a surprise leader as she has often led after the first leg but she has yet to pull off two solid runs for a victory.
"It was hard and bumpy and rough. I was struggling a bit but felt confident and am pleased to be racing here," the Spaniard said of Soelden, which has the highest start of any race on the World Cup tour at 3,048 metres.
"My dream is now to finally reach the podium," she added.
There was disappointment for Austria when teenager Nicole Hosp, who wrote history last year by winning the race in a three-way tie with Slovenia's Tina Maze and Norwegian Andrine Flemmen, crashed out on the steep section.
The Austrian clipped a gate with her knee and was hurled hard on to her back and into the safety netting. She was carried off the glacier on a stretcher and taken to Innsbruck hospital.
The extent of her injuries was not immediately known but the Austrian ski team doctor said Hosp was suffering pain in her right knee and back.
Race favourite Paerson said she was unnerved by Hosp's fall, which interrupted racing just before the Swede's start.
"Wearing the red bib (as the discipline's champion) and what with the interruption, I was very nervous. I didn't ski my best and made a mistake after the flat section," Paerson, a winner of three World Cup giant slalom races last year, said.
Ertl, who has notched up nine giant slalom World Cup wins, said she was pleased to have converted good training runs into a solid performance in Saturday's race.
Last year's joint winner Maze lay in fourth place, while Alexandra Meissnitzer was the best-placed Austrian, lying in fifth position and just over a second off the pace.
Italy's Karen Putzer, the only racer to match Paerson's three wins last season in the technical discipline, stood in sixth position, 1.06 seconds behind the Spanish leader.
The men have a giant slalom here on Sunday then the World Cup takes a break for more than a month before the North American stage of the circuit begins in Park City, Utah, on November 28.
The women return to Europe in mid-December for the remainder of the season which ends with the finals in Sestriere, Italy, in March.
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