Knee pain! Timing problems! The Giant Leadership is Gone!: Is Gut-Behrami Running Out of Steam Now?

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Lara Gut-Behrami (32) shakes her head. Again and again. She throws her hands away and waves him away. It is not she who will ascend the skiing throne on the Lienzer Schlossberg, but Mikaela Shiffrin (28, USA). The American races like a queen and can even afford to play with her lead in the second run – eventually taking her 92nd World Cup victory.

Gut-Behrami lost 1.21 seconds in sixth place, making her clearly the best Swiss woman. ‘I didn’t go out today. In the morning the timing wasn’t right and I wasn’t moving very well. I was too slippery in the second round,” she says. The price is high: Gut-Behrami loses the leader’s jersey in the Giant Slalom World Cup to Federica Brignone (33, It), who comes second and turns a 5-point deficit into a 35-point lead.

The wind has changed at Gut-Behrami. In the first five races of the season she achieved two victories and two more podium finishes. Since then, she has finished 13th, 11th and was eliminated once. Added to this is this 6th place – their weakest gigantic ranking in a year. “Given the difficult circumstances, this is a good achievement,” says head coach Beat Tschuor. What does he mean?

“Received a huge blow”

Things haven’t been going well for Well-Behrami lately. To be precise, her knee has been causing problems since she suffered a blow during the Super-G in Val d’Isère. «When I was eliminated, I suffered a huge blow. So I’m glad I’m here at all. I had to do everything I could to get my knee to heal again.”

The question immediately arises: how bad are Gut-Behrami’s knee problems? She says: “It’s not a serious injury, but I’ve been doing it for a few years. The knee gives me trouble every now and then.”

This was already the case in the autumn at the training camp in Ushuaia (Arg) – at that time the foggy, wet and cold conditions caused her problems. ‘I am more sensitive than before. “It’s not just me, my knee loves the sun too,” she said.

No break planned

Gut-Behrami is not currently thinking about a forced break. “It is normal that her knee is occasionally irritated after so many years at the World Cup,” says Tschoor.

The Ticino woman’s next giant slalom follows on Saturday in Kranjska Gora (Sln) – will she be back to her old form by then?

Source : Blick