Sawt Falasteen - Brignone inches towards World Cup crown at tricky La Thuile super-G

Italian Brignone leads Gut-Behrami by 332 points with five races remaining in the season after finishing third, one place ahead of her Swiss rival in tricky conditions which led to several crashes, including one for skiing icon Lindsey Vonn.

The giant slalom world champion Brignone was 0.39 seconds behind 21-year-old Aicher, who picked up her first ever super-G win and second in the World Cup overall.

But Brignone was fortunate to even finish her run after smashing through a gate on her way to her 82nd podium finish in the World Cup, as snow conditions caused the athletes huge problems.

"It was not easy, the snow is not, it doesn't make you confident... I felt like I was stuck right before the flat and I had no speed and I knew it," said Brignone.

"It could have been really worse for me. I don't know how I didn't crash. I'm really lucky today."

Brignone's fellow Italian Sofia Goggia finished second with a typically courageous run which left her just 0.06sec behind Aicher.

"I skied well. We knew that the conditions would be a bit mixed... It was difficult, with lots of different tyes of snow," said Goggia.

"There are some races where all you can do is try to get to the bottom of the piste."

Brignone, who trails Gut-Behrami by 45 points in the super-G standings, should have another chance to claim the overall title on home snow in the second La Thuile super-G on Friday, in what has been an uncertain few days in the Italian alps.

Weather and piste conditions made it impossible to stage the downhill which had been originally scheduled for Thursday, meaning the athletes instead contend two super-Gs with Saturday being left as a reserve day should it not be possible to hold a race on Friday.

And Thursday's race was also stopped for half an hour due to a course worker collapsing and needing to be airlifted away in a helicopter.

The lack of the downhill in Italy this week means Brignone will head into the season final at Sun Valley at the top of the downhill standings, 16 points ahead of Cornelia Hutter with one more race in that discipline this season.

H.Darwish--SF-PST