SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM, Austria (AP) — American skier Lauren Macuga posted the fastest time in the downhill portion of the new team combined event at the Alpine skiing world championships on Tuesday.
Her teammate Paula Moltzan will start the slalom portion later Tuesday with an advantage of 0.23 seconds over Germany 1, where Emma Aicher ran the downhill and Lena Duerr was scheduled to race the slalom.
Austria 1, with downhiller Mirjam Puchner and slalom racer Katharina Liensberger, was 0.38 seconds behind in third.
Downhill world champion Breezy Johnson, who teams with Mikaela Shiffrin, trailed by 0.51 seconds in fourth.
If Johnson and Shiffrin finish in the top three, it's Shiffrin's 15th career medal from world championships and she matches the record set in the 1930s by German skier Christl Cranz.
Lindsey Vonn finished a full two seconds behind Johnson and left her teammate AJ Hurt with a deficit of 2.51 seconds for the slalom.
The team combined entails one racer competing in a downhill run and another in a slalom run, with their two times added up to determine the final results. Each nation can enter up to four pairings.
The team combined will make its debut at next year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics and was first held at elite level on Tuesday, after it had been tested at junior world championships.
“Oh my gosh, what a fun run. I knew I nailed it,” said Macuga, who won bronze in the super-G last Thursday.
Slalom specialist Moltzan was a junior world champion 10 years ago and was part of the American team that won gold at the worlds in 2023 in the mixed team event in a different format.
“We played a little bit of spikeball yesterday to get our team camaraderie going,” Macuga said. “I am just so excited to watch her ski. I have no control, so I wish her good luck.”
Fourth-placed Johnson said she would have liked to give Shiffrin “the green light” for the slalom run.
“But here we are, hopefully she can do what she can on the second run,” Johnson said.
Recovered from an abdominal injury that required surgery in December, Shiffrin was set to compete in her first event at the worlds.
She initially planned to race the giant slalom, as defending champion, and the slalom but skip the team combined, then changed her mind Monday when she felt not ready yet to compete in Thursday's GS.
With GS training off her schedule, she then decided to enter the team combined.
Vonn had campaigned to race with Shiffrin on an American team that would have united the two most successful skiers in World Cup history, but the coaching staff decided to form the teams based on “season-best results” in both downhill and slalom.
“It would have been a cool thing if those two greats would have raced together, but at the moment others are stronger in their performance,” American speed coach Alex Hoedlmoser said. “We had to make sure to bring the fastest pairings together, and it was very obvious that Breezy was the fastest in the downhill and therefore would race with Mikaela.”
In her last appearance at the worlds, Vonn finished the downhill in 21st, one position above Andorra's Cande Moreno, in a field of 26 starters.
“I had no speed at all ... I tried to give my best, as always. Unfortunately it was not my world championships," the American star told Austrian TV.
Vonn came out of retirement after nearly six years at age 40 this season with a new titanium knee, scored two top 10 finishes on the World Cup circuit in January but did not finish the super-G and placed 15th in the downhill at the worlds.
“I tried to give my best, as always. Unfortunately, it was not my world championships,” Vonn said.
"The skis are fast, but for me something is wrong with my boots and in the turns I don’t get any speed. I stayed in my tuck but I was a turtle the whole way down.”
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing
