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| - Switzerland's Corinne Suter started the defence of her World Cup downhill title with an impressive victory in Val d'Isere on Friday, edging out Sofia Goggia. The 26-year-old Suter, who claimed both the downhill and super-G globes last season, beat Goggia in the first downhill of the campaign by just 0.11 seconds. American Breezy Johnson was only nine hundredths of a second further back in third place, claiming her first-ever podium finish on the circuit. Two-time downhill world champion Ilka Stuhec had to settle for fourth. It was the injury-plagued Suter's third career World Cup win after one in each of the speed events earlier this year. She only picked up her first points of the season last weekend in Courchevel with a 20th-placed finish in a giant slalom, after the two super-G races scheduled for Saint Moritz earlier this month were cancelled due to poor weather conditions. Friday's race was suspended for around 20 minutes after a nasty fall for Austrian Nicole Schmidhofer, who missed a turn and crashed into the safety net at full speed. She was evacuated on a stretcher. The same corner, which came shortly after a difficult jump, brought the end of several other races, with reigning overall champion Federica Brignone also crashing out in the same spot as Schmidhofer. Olympic gold medallist Goggia almost slipped out at the same section, but the Italian recovered well enough to finish in the top three of a World Cup event for the 28th time. Slovakia's Petra Vlhova could only finish in 26th place on a difficult day for the all-rounders, but extended her lead over Mikaela Shiffrin in the overall standings to 150 points. American star Shiffrin is not competing in this weekend's trio of speed races. jc/nr
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