Former overall World Cup champion Carlo Janka won the super-G test event for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics on Sunday by a large margin, while several pre-race favourites failed to finish their runs.
In a race much more challenging than the downhill a day earlier, the Swiss racer clocked one minute, 26.16 seconds for a 0.82 advantage over Christof Innerhofer of Italy. Vincent Kriechmayr of Austria finished third, 1.06 behind.
"I took some risks and everything worked over the jumps, over the waves. I had a perfect bib today," said Janka, who started seventh. "I had some information on the start from the other guys down in the finish and it worked very well for me."
Janka has struggled with injuries since winning the overall title six years ago. This was the first super-G victory of his career and his 11th World Cup win in all.
Janka's victory also gave the struggling Swiss men's team its first win of the season.
"We are a small team at the moment because of a lot of injuries," Janka said. "It's good for all the coaches and teammates. Hopefully, we take some confidence out of this.
Innerhofer had been an outspoken critic of the downhill course, which he derided as too slow and easy.
"The super-G was different," Innerhofer said. "It was a nice super-G because, as you see, there are a lot of guys who (make) mistakes. It's difficult because it's a lot of bumps at beginning and the speed is OK. You start at the steepest point of this downhill so the speed is OK.
"We had the same speed as for the downhill," Innerhofer added. "It's right to have 95km/h in the super-G."
Pre-race favourites Dominik Paris of Italy, Norway's Kjetil Jansrud and American Andrew Weibrecht each had trouble.
Paris misjudged an approach a jump and flew way off course, Jansrud did well not to crash after hitting a small bump and losing control and Weibrecht went wide at the same spot and became stuck in soft snow.
"I just got a bad report," Weibrecht said. "I had a plan but I corrected it on the report. I should have just trusted my plan."
Ten centimetres of snow fell on the course overnight, making conditions softer than Saturday's downhill won by Jansrud.
This was the first of 28 test events for the next Winter Games and the inexperienced course crew was tested by the fresh snowfall.
