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Maze captures downhill gold

Daily staff report
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Slovenia's Tina Maze flies to gold at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships women's downhill on Friday at Beaver Creek. Maze edged Austria's Anna Fenninger and Switzerland's Lara Gut.
AP photo | AP

BEAVER CREEK — These will not be Lindsey Vonn’s World Championships, but they may be Tina Maze’s.

The Slovenian edged Austrian Anna Fenninger by 2-hundredths of a second to capture the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships women’s downhill on the Raptor racecourse on Friday at Beaver Creek. Maze, the defending Olympic downhill champion, won her second medal of the Championships, having captured silver in Tuesday’s super-G. Fenninger also nabbed her second medal of the races after winning said super-G.

Switzerland’s Lara Gut was 0.34 seconds off Maze’s pace of 1 minute, 45.89 seconds for bronze.



Vonn, running 22nd, the last of the favorites, had an early lead after The Runway section of the course, but made an error before The Gauntlet, the spot which foiled most racers on Friday. By the third split, Vonn was 0.89 seconds off the pace and wasn’t able to make up that time.

Through 30 racers, Vonn was fifth behind Austria’s Nicole Schmidhofer.




Through 30 of 39 racers, Americans Julia Mancuso was 16th, Laurenne Ross 17th and Stacey Cook 19th.

While Maze and Fenninger each have gold and silver medals so far during the 2015 Worlds, Maze is likely to compete in all five women’s events and has a chance to equal Norwegian Lasse Kjus’ record of five medals in one Worlds, set here in 1999. Maze, who leads the overall World Cup points list, and won the title last during the 2012-13 season with an astonishing 2,414 points, is considered the favorite in Monday’s combined — one run of downhill and slalom. The Slovenian will still have stiff competition in the technical events — giant slalom and slalom — next week.

The Worlds continue today with the final run of men’s training for Saturday’s downhill at 11 a.m.

This story will be updated.