Cortina d'Ampezzo (Italy) (AFP)

After three days of waiting for everyone because of the weather, and twelve years waiting for her, the Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami won her first world title in the super-G in Cortina d'Ampezzo (Italy) Thursday.

She edged Corinne Suter by 34/100 for a Swiss double and American Mikaela Shiffrin by 47/100 who made an incredible comeback on a speed podium, more than a year after her last super-G.

A world title for Lara Gut-Behrami is an anomaly repaired in a huge track record, after five medals won in the last twelve years at the World Championships.

In 2009 in Val d'Isère, at only 17 years old, the gifted girl had won silver in downhill and combined, before super-G silver in Schladming in 2013, bronze in downhill in 2015 in Vail, then the bronze in 2017 in St. Moritz in super-G.

Huge super-G favorite in Cortina d'Ampezzo for her Worlds seventh, after four straight wins in the World Cup discipline in 2021, Lara Gut-Behrami (29) has assumed her status.

But its title is also that of a rebirth.

At the top in 2016, the year of her big crystal globe, she suffered a serious knee injury before the combined slalom of the 2017 Worlds, the start of several difficult seasons.

The wife of footballer Valon Behrami takes time to regain her level.

She won a race in January 2018 and then nothing until February 2020.

His association with a new physical trainer in the summer of 2019, Spaniard Alejo Hervas, a long-time close to the Gut family, seems to change everything.

"In the past, when it was complicated in recent years, I didn't find the fluidity, but the details that I lacked came with the work we continued to do day by day, technically, physically, on the material . It is all this which made it possible to put the pieces of the puzzle together and to find this sequence of rounds at a very high level, ”she explained before the start of the competition.

Her strong character, which earned her often strained relations with the Swiss ski community - she had sharply criticized the Crans Montana piste last month, drawing the ire of the organizers - allowed her to rise again to the Mountain peak.

- Shiffrin close to the feat -

But for the first race of these Worlds, contested under the sun but with the wind after three days of postponement due to the weather, it was almost beaten by the incredible Mikaela Shiffrin.

Best time in the last intermediate lap, the American made a big mistake in the last part which cost her several tenths and surely the victory.

Title holder, Shiffrin (25) was far from being a favorite because she hadn't competed in a sprint race for over a year and her victory over the super-G in Bansko (Bulgaria) in January 2020. La her father's death, then the health crisis and back problems first took her away from the circuit, before she decided to be more careful this winter and to be satisfied with technical races.

Shiffrin won an eighth world medal in five editions, after five titles (four in slalom, one in super-G), a silver medal and a bronze in giant.

Corinne Suter, second Thursday, won at 26 her third medal at the Worlds, after the silver in the downhill and the bronze in the super-G in Are (Sweden) two years ago.

The French women missed their race: Tessa Worley is 13th at 1 sec 30, Tiffany Gauthier 21st at 2 sec 20 and Laura Gauché 26th at 2 sec 87.

© 2021 AFP