Riesch wins World Cup downhill

Germany's Maria Hofl-Riesch Cortina d'Ampezzo - Arab Today Germany's Maria Hofl-Riesch won the women's World Cup downhill held over a shortened course at Cortina d'Ampezzo on Friday. Already leading in the overall World Cup standings, Hofl-Riesch timed 1 minute 17.84 seconds with Liechtenstein's Tina Weirather second 00.31sec back and Austria's Nicole Schmidhofer at 00.75sec. It was a third World Cup win of the season for the 29-year-old German, the two others also being downhills at Lake Louise in Canada. Hofl-Riesch came second the previous day in a World Cup super-G and, in the absence through injury of American Lindsey Vonn, she will be the favourite for gold in the speed disciplines in Sochi. The World Cup continues at Cortina at the weekend with another downhill on Saturday and a super-G on Sunday. The meeting had originally been scheduled to take place at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany, but was switched to Cortina where the snow conditions were much better. Source: AFP