Sofia Goggia scores first win of 2020 in Val d'Isere downhill

Sofia Goggia claimed her eighth career Alpine Ski World Cup win in the Val d'Isere downhill on Saturday (19 December).

Italy's reigning Olympic champion was second to Corinne Suter in yesterday's race after narrowly avoiding crashing at the compression jump, and she beat the Swiss by 0.24s to record her first win since last December's St Moritz Super G.

Breezy Johnson was three-hundredths of a second further back in third as the American scored her second career World Cup podium in the space of 24 hours.

Wearing start bib 30, Norway's Kajsa Vickhoff Lie had the best result of her career in fourth (+0.33s) ahead of Kira Weidle of Germany and Austria's Ramona Siebenhofer in sixth.

Slovenia's two-time downhill world champion Ilka Stuhec and PyeongChang 2018 Super G gold medallist Ester Ledecka finished tied for seventh.

Plenty of skiers showed good speed at the top, but Goggia was in a class of her own on the bottom half.

Johnson was a full three-quarters of a second up at the second time check but lost time lower down and had to settle for another third place.

The famous OK course was tweaked slightly to avoid a repeat of the high number of crashes on the right-hand turn after the compression jump, including a lucky escape for 2017 Super G world champion Nicole Schmidhofer, in Friday's race.

Schmidhofer is out for the rest of the season after rupturing knee ligaments with last season's overall Crystal Globe winner Federica Brignone and Alice McKennis-Duran also missing today's race after falls yesterday.

Overall World Cup leader Petra Vlhova finished out of the points in 33rd with PyeongChang combined gold medallist Michelle Gisin moving above Mikaela Shiffrin into second thanks to her ninth place.

Vlhova remains on 425 points ahead of Gisin on 298 and Shiffrin on 275.

After two downhills, the women end their long weekend in the French Alps with a Super G on Sunday.