Anna Fenninger wins World Cup giant slalom

World champion Anna Fenninger of Austria held on to her first-run lead to win a women’s World Cup giant slalom Saturday and reduce her deficit to overall leader Tina Maze of Slovenia to 84 points.

Fenninger used a strong finish to her final run to finish in a total time of 2 minutes, 24.50 seconds and edge Viktoria Rebensburg of Germany by 0.04 in Maribor, Slovenia.

In front of her home crowd, Maze fell with only two gates left in the first leg. Lindsey Vonn also failed to finish the opening run when the American crashed into the safety netting but escaped injuries.

Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein came 0.30 behind. American teenager Mikaela Shiffrin was third after the opening run but dropped to fifth, 0.54 off the lead.

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Olympic champion Matthias Mayer led an Austrian sweep of the podium in a World Cup downhill on home snow.

Mayer clocked 1 minute, 49.83 seconds down the rarely used Schneekristall-Zwolfer course to finished a slim 0.02 seconds ahead of Max Franz. Hannes Reichelt placed third, 0.21 behind, in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Austria.

It was a big rebound from the recently concluded world championships in Colorado, where Austria failed to place a racer in the top 10 of the men’s downhill for the first time in the history of the event — stretching back to 1931.

It was Mayer’s second career World Cup win, having also taken a downhill at finals last March in Lenzerheide, Switzerland — a month after his surprise win at the Sochi Games.