Valerie Grenier Shines in the First Race of 2024 in Kranjska Gora and achieve her second victory and third podium in the World Cup. She sets the best time in the second run to climb to the top of the podium after finishing in fourth position in the first run. Last season, in the first of the two Giant Slaloms held in Kranjska Gora Grenier achieved her first podium and maiden victory in the World Cup.
Lara Gut-Behrami finished in second position +0.37 seconds behind Grenier. Federica Brignone completed the podium in third position (+0.51).
"I think it’s my favorite hill for sure, it seems to suit me. I don’t know why, there is just something about it. I love it here. Definitely after the first run, I wanted the win because I was so pissed. So, I went all out", Grenier said.
Lara Gut-Behrami achieved today her 79th World Cup podium. She made it to the podium 10 times and won 3 times in the last 26 World Cup Giant Slaloms ."For me, it was important to find my timing, I was struggling a little bit in Lienz with that. Today I did two solid runs, which was my goal. It was definitely not an easy race", she said.
Brignone achieved today her podium 63 podium in the World Cup and the 34 in the Giant Slalom. It's the fourth consecutive time the Italian finished on the podium in the tech discipline this season, something she never achieved before.
"Today I feel like I didn’t do my best. The other times I was always 100 percent and I did what I had to do, so I was really happy with myself. Today, I don’t know, maybe I was missing something, missing a little thing, especially in the second run. I couldn’t attack as I wanted", Brignone said.
The fight in the discipline between Gut-Behrami and Brignone becomes a little closer with the Italian leading the standings by only 15 points over the Swiss.