It only took five minutes in Yanqing for the sensations champion of Pyeongchang to be dethroned.

Ester Ledecká, the snowboarder from Prague, who caused one of the biggest surprises in skiing history with her Olympic victory in Super-G in 2018, had to start the race with number 2 this time.

Achim Dreis

sports editor.

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And the 26-year-old's ride was good, with no visible mistakes, but it wasn't good enough.

Her time, 1:13.94 minutes, was trumped by the next best driver.

Miriam Puchner from Austria needed 22 hundredths of a second less for the 1984 meter long distance on the slope "The Rock".

Ester Ledecká acknowledged her replacement with a motionless expression.

Because she had already become Olympic champion again in Beijing – three days earlier in the parallel giant slalom with the snowboard.

Another five minutes later it was clear that the Czech multi-talent wouldn't even be enough for a medal this time, because the following runners, Michelle Gisin from Switzerland and Tamara Tippler from Austria, were also slightly faster.

In the end, Ledecká finished fifth, 0.13 seconds from another medal and 0.43 seconds from the next gold.

"I had to remind myself that I'm no longer a snowboarder, but a ski racer," said the cool Czech.

Gold was won this time by a runner who had slipped out of the medal ranks by a single, tiny hundredth of a second in Pyeongchang when Ledecká with start number 26 turned the classification upside down: Lara Gut-Behrami still had an open account with the Super-G Olympia.

And the now 30-year-old from Switzerland settled this bill with interest and compound interest.

The current Super-G World Champion from Cortina d'Ampezzo showed a fantastic ride from top to bottom, without wobbles, always on the go, perfect especially in the steep curve passage, and thus conquered her trauma from Pyeongchang.

At the finish she was 0.22 seconds ahead of Puchner.

The equivalent of 5.90 meters that made the difference.

There was no drama about Mikaela Shiffrin this time.

The American, after two eliminations in the technical disciplines hard to doubt her undisputed skiing skills, life and the Olympic world, showed a passable ride early Friday morning, which was not much to complain about, but which also did not necessarily match her status " best skier” in the world.

At the finish she acknowledged 0.79 seconds behind.

rank nine.

But she had reached the goal.

After all.

The trio of winners crystallized long ago: Lara Gut-Behrami was supposed to be Olympic champion.

Austria's Miriam Puchner would secure silver.

And Michelle Gisin completed the Swiss success with bronze (+0.30).

But none of them wanted to celebrate until all runners had crossed the finish line.

Above all, we had to wait for the ominous number 26, because Ester Ledecká had worn that in Pyeongchang when Anna Veith had already given interviews with the winners, before the podium was suddenly shaken up.

This time, number 26 was worn by Kira Weidle, the only German participant.

When she arrived in Beijing, Weidle got on the wrong bus and arrived at the wrong Olympic village.

The always relaxed Weidle calmly corrected the mistake and then took the next bus to the mountains of Yanqing.

She had lost some time, nothing more.

On the Olympic slope, she occasionally took the wrong direction, especially after the jumps.

The mistakes added up, in the end she was 1.15 seconds behind, ranked 15th. "I wanted to get a feel for the descent," said the World Cup runner-up afterwards on ARD, it went "partly" well, "partially not so".

But now it was pretty clear that the highly decorated Lara Gut-Behrami, overall World Cup winner in 2016 and double world champion in 2021, had finally crowned her career: as Olympic champion in Super-G.

Finally she showed her bright smile, her first tears of joy came, washing away the sad tears of 2018.

Father Pauli Gut, who had significantly promoted and supported Lara's career, took his victorious daughter in his arms.

Luck was perfect.

And Ester Ledecká only had words of praise for her successor: "She's a great skier".

Her first Olympic gold was "only a matter of time".