Sara Hector produced the run of the first run in Kranjska Gora top take a slender lead from Tessa Worley with Marta Bassino in third. Katharina Truppe and Meta Hrovat round out the top five after the first run.
The race was originally scheduled for Maribor but weather conditions dictated for the second year that the races were switched top Kranjska Gora, a venue normally associated with the men.
Worley posted the early marker time before Hector, starting last of the top seven seeds nailed the run to lead by just 0.08. Bassino is almost a quarter of a second back but then the gap is over three quarters of a second to Truppe.
The two big names in the World Cup this season, Mikaela Shiffrin and Petra Vlhova both had slightly off days and are currently down in 14 and 15th respectively, about a second and a half off the pace of Hector. They will start just after the first TV break.
This may be significant starting position as after warm weather that had the slope salted, then injected and then cold weather, how the course reacts could well be significant.
With just four racers from outside the top thirty starters having made it into the thirty that gp on the second run, it will be interesting to see how the race goes.
The race saw the return of Lara Gut-Behrami who has missed the last five races due to a Covid positive test just prior to the speed races in Val d'Isere. Gut-Behrami currently sits in joint seventeenth with Maryna Gasienica-Daniel, 1.53 back.
Hector will have given the rather depleted Swedish team cheer with this performance. It was seven years between race win one and race win two, can she hold on to make race win three ...?
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