Norway’s Olympic super-G champion Kjetil Jansrud won his fourth World Cup race of the season on Saturday taking the super-G at Val Gardena.
The 29-year-old, who was winning the seventh race of his career, timed 1min 33.87sec, 46 hundreths of a second quicker than Dominik Paris of Italy with Austrian Hannes Reichelt third, 54 hundreths of a second adrift.
Jansrud, also Olympic bronze medallist in the downhill, extended his lead in the overall World Cup standings to 152 points over Austria’s three-time defending champion Marcel Hirscher.
A day after claiming second place behind American Steve Nyman in the downhill, Jansrud put in a near flawless performance on what was a technically challenging course with changing snow conditions to finish top of the podium.
The in-form Scandinavian said the absence of his injured compatriot, Aksel Lund Svindal, had increased the “pressure and responsibility” but was not the reason behind his impressive run of results.
“Maybe I have more pressure and more responsibility, but I don’t think his (Svindal) absence explains my results,” said Jansrud.
“The most important thing is to remain in good shape. Aside from that, in terms of how I feel on the skis, there’s no difference to last season.
“On Monday I’ll go to my parents, close to Lillehammer, for Christmas. It won’t be all rest though as on Christmas Day I have to catch a flight for Italy for the downhill at Santa Caterina.”
Paris, who has shown consistency in the early part of the season, has widened his scope for overall World Cup contention — before this race the 25-year-old from the Italian Alto Adige had never placed better than 13th in a super-G.
It was his second podium in three weeks after his third place finish at Lake Louise in Canada.
“I knew I could get a good result in this race because the course looked adapted to my characteristics, although I didn’t expect to finish second,” said Paris.
“Of course, Jansrud is in front of me. I know I still have some improvements to make.”