Lindsey Vonn will enter 2016 looking up to Lara Gut in the World Cup overall standings.
Vonn, a four-time World Cup overall champion skiing with a reported cold, missed a gate and failed to finish her first run of a World Cup giant slalom in Lienz, Austria, on Monday.
Meanwhile, the World Cup overall leader Gut won for the third time in four races. Gut was second in the first run and then overtook Slovenian Ana Drev, who fell in the second run.
Liechtenstein’s Tina Weirather was second, .12 behind, followed by German Viktoria Rebensburg. Full results are here.
Gut, 24, now leads Vonn, 31, by 158 points after 13 of a scheduled 41 races, after picking up 100 points to Vonn’s zero on Monday. The season concludes in March.
“I hope there will be no snow anymore and they have to cancel all remaining races,” Gut said, according to The Associated Press. “It’s cool, but I have to keep going instead of starting to calculate. A few starts and no points, that can happen. It’s all running smoothly now.”
Vonn’s stated goal going into this season was to earn a fifth World Cup overall crown and first since two major knee surgeries kept her from defending her Olympic downhill title in Sochi.
She knew she’d have to pick up points in giant slalom, in addition to dominating downhill and super-G as she has done, to top the overall standings.
The absences of the last two women’s overall winners — Tina Maze (break) and Anna Fenninger (injury) — plus Olympic slalom champion Mikaela Shiffrin (injury) seemed at first to benefit Vonn.
But now Gut may be benefiting more. The Olympic downhill bronze medalist has notched victories this season in downhill, giant slalom and super combined, showing more versatility than Vonn. In four GS starts this season, Vonn has a win, a 13th and two DNFs.
The final scheduled World Cup race of the year is Tuesday in Lienz, a slalom that Vonn is not expected to enter as it’s her worst discipline.
Vonn’s next likely race is a two-run, sprint downhill in Zauchensee, Austria, on Jan. 9.
