(Reuters) -Bryce Bennett of the United States sprang a surprise by claiming the first World Cup victory of his career in the men’s downhill at Val Gardena in Italy on Saturday.
The 29-year-old claimed first place with a time of 2:02.42, having previously never finished higher than fourth in 106 World Cup starts.
“Over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking about what a win would mean. It’s everything I thought it would be,” Bennett said.
“I’ve been skiing poorly through the last few races, and here I felt really good and I just let it flow. It’s just frustrating when you have bad training runs and bad races, but here, anything can happen for me.
“I had a good plan. Honestly my expectations were a top 10 and then when I crossed the line and it was green, I was more than excited.”
Austria’s Otmar Striedinger was second, 0.14 seconds behind, while Niels Hintermann of Switzerland was 0.32 seconds off the pace in third, both marking their first podium finishes of the season.
Local favourite Dominik Paris of Italy narrowly missed out on a podium place to finish fourth, while Switzerland’s Beat Feuz was fifth.
Pre-race favourite Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway, who was gunning for a third consecutive Val Gardena downhill win, did not finish after a mistake ruined a lightning start in the upper section.
The next stage of the Italian block of World Cup races takes place in Alta Badia, with giant slaloms on Sunday and Monday.
(Reporting by Alasdair Mackenzie; Editing by Ken Ferris and Ed Osmond)
