Dominik Paris revealed his depth of understanding of the infamous Hahnenkamm mountain in winning Friday's super-G race in Kitzbuehel, his fourth victory on the World Cup ski circuit.
The 25-year-old Italian won the prestigious downhill here in 2013 and displayed a faultless line down the tricky bottom third of the course to clock 1min 09.99sec.
Austrian duo Matthias Mayer, the current Olympic downhill champion, and Georg Streitberger completed the podium, at 0.06 and 0.34sec respectively.
"I really didn't think of winning today in as much as I wasn't perfect in the upper part," Paris said.
"Going into the traverse, where you have to be tactical, and then the dip to the finish line both went well."
Paris added: "To win twice in Kitzbuehel is fantastic. The first victory remains the stand-out moment of my career.
"Yesterday in the second downhill training session, I felt good arriving down the bottom. And then I had confidence on a snow that seemed similar to that when I had my first win here."
Reigning world champion Ted Ligety was first out of the hut down the 2.1-kilometre-long Streifalm piste, but missed a gate after going wide on the last bend.
Last year's winner of the super-G, Swiss veteran Didier Defago, came in 10th at 0.85sec. One of the big pre-race favourites, Kjetil Jansrud, finished seventh in 1:10.77, the Norwegian having topped both downhill training runs in the week.
Paris is one a number of racers who will compete in a later slalom, the joint results going to the super combined title.
A number of slalom specialists will fancy their chances of hauling themselves up the leaderboard when the racers take to the piste from 1545 GMT.
Best placed is Frenchman Alexis Pinturault, 25th in the super-G but only 1.47sec off Paris.
Importantly, Pinturault has a slender advance on main rivals Natko Zrncic-Dim of Croatia and a 1.31sec lead on Austria's Marcel Hirscher.
The super-G was held up after the main racers had come down for a helicopter evacuation of Switzerland's Marc Gisin, who suffered a heavy fall on the testing, icy course.
Racers touched 123km/h in one of the most prestigious speed events in one of the circuit's most iconic locations and there have been some extremely gruesome crashes in the past, notably Swiss racer Daniel Albrecht in 2009 and Austrian Hans Grugger in 2011.
Saturday sees the 75th running of the downhill, which made its debut in 1931, with the two-legged slalom on Sunday.
Share
