Goggia gets off mark in Crans-Montana downhill

CRANS-MONTANA: Olympic champion Sofia Goggia marked up a belated first World Cup win of the season in Saturday's downhill at Crans-Montana in Switzerland, although a major timing malfunction delayed the official podium result.

The Italian downhill specialist Goggia was sidelined for three months after fracturing her ankle in October, only making her comeback last month.

A couple of runner up positions at Garmisch in January were followed by a super-g silver at the world championships in Are, and the 'wild horse' as she is sometimes nicknamed went one better in Saturday's World Cup race.

The winner however needed patience after the timing devices malfunctioned during Swiss racer Lara Gut's descent, just ahead of her run, forcing the star from Bergamo to wait several minutes at the starting gate before setting off.

The 26-year-old took the win from Switzerland's Joana Haehlen who finished second at 0.36sec.

There remained confusion as to who was third due to the timing device malfunction and while there was an official podium celebration with flowers the official results, and trophies, are due to be released this evening.

If maintained this will be Goggia's sixth career World Cup win and fourth in the discipline.

With two downhills of the women's season remaining Schmidhofer leads the race for the discipline honours from her compatriot Ramona Siebenhofer.

The race took place in the same resort of Crans-Montana where a spectacular avalanche sent emergency services scrambling in midweek as snow thundered across 300 to 400 metres (yards) of the lower section of the Kandahar piste leaving two meters of compact snow and killing a ski-patrol employee.