Italian ski star Dominik Paris shines in tight World Cup super-G for second win in three days

By Canadian Press on March 9, 2025.

KVITFJELL, Norway (AP) — After just one World Cup race win in three years for Dominik Paris, the Italian star made it two in three days Sunday.

Paris was the only racer to break clear in a super-G of tight margins, on a course shortened by fog on the mountain, and added to his downhill victory Friday.

Take Paris out of Sunday’s race and the top 25 all would have been within one second of James Crawford, the 2023 world champion from Canada.

Paris was there, however, as the standout racer 0.38 faster than Crawford and 0.47 clear of third-placed Miha Hrobat. The result was unofficial with low-ranked skiers still racing.

Marco Odermatt placed fourth though his season-long super-G title was confirmed in midweek when his closest challenger, Paris’s teammate Mattia Casse, was injured crashing in a training run for the downhill.

Paris, the German-speaking Italian with the French-sounding family name, is most at home on the Norwegian slope that staged the 1994 Olympics races.

He now has six of his 24 career World Cup wins at Kvitfjell, where he also completed a weekend double in downhill and super-G in 2019, and won a downhill in March 2022.

That had been a career season for Paris six years ago. He won a career-best seven World Cup races, plus his only gold medal — in super-G at the 2019 worlds — and his only World Cup crystal trophy, for the season-long super-G title. That success all came after spending the summer recording an album as a singer in a heavy metal band, Rise of Voltage.

Odermatt earned 50 race points Sunday and has an unbeatable lead of 210 in the super-G standings before the last race March 23 at Sun Valley, Idaho. It is his third straight super-G title.

The Swiss superstar’s fourth straight overall World Cup title also is assured with a 570-point lead over Henrik Kristoffersen and just six races left. Though 600 points can be won, Kristoffersen does not race in downhill or super-G.

Kristoffersen will be favored to pick up points next weekend when the men’s World Cup circuit stays in Norway for a giant slalom and slalom at nearby Hafjell.

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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing

The Associated Press