Career Best Sixth for Brandenburg
KRANJSKA GORA, Slovenia (March 11) - Will Brandenburg (Spokane, WA) laid down a blistering final run of slalom Sunday to land an Audi FIS Alpine World Cup career best sixth in Kranjska Gora as Sweden's Andre Myrer took the win. Ted Ligety (Park City, UT), who won Saturday's giant slalom by 1.61 seconds, tied for ninth to secure the Vitranc Trophy signifying the fastest racer over the two-day series. It was the final race of the regular season with the top 25 racers in each discpline moving to Schladming, Austria for the March 11-18 World Cup Finals.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Will Brandenburg (Spokane, WA) produced a career best sixth in the Kranjska Gora slalom.
- Ted Ligety (Park City, UT), who won Saturday's giant slalom, was ninth to secure the Vitranc Trophy as the fastest racer on the weekend.
- Nolan Kasper (Warren, VT) was 17th and Jimmy Cochran (Keene, NH) 25th as four Americans made the final.
- Ligety and Kasper qualifed for the top 25 World Cup Finals in slalom.
- Andre Myhrer of Sweden won as Croatian Ivica Kostelic extended his World Cup slalom lead when Austrian Marcel Hirscher did not finish.
- Only the March 11-18 World Cup Finals in Schladming, Austria remain in the 2012 World Cup season.
QUOTES
Will Brandenburg
I really needed that. It has been a grind of a year and I have been skiing great and haven’t been getting to the finish with a clean run. It’s the first time I have done that and been happy at the finish line of a World Cup.
I have the speed and sometimes I take too much risk. Today I skied smart. My coaches and I have worked on my line and tactics a lot. I took the right tactics today in a first run for where I was starting and in the second run I let it go a little bit more. You always want more but that was a great day.
I have battled where I try to take a more aggressive line and it sometimes pays off for good speed but it hasn’t paid off in consistency. I am learning. I will come back next year and hopefully build off this result and start getting closer and closer to podium.
Ted Ligety
I skied pretty well, especially in the second run on the top half. The top half was very good but I lost a ton of time in the bottom. It would have been easy to move all the way up to the podium probably if I skied a little better there, but that is how it goes sometimes. But I am happy to have three top-10s in a row.
It’s cool to see Will finally get well into the top 10. He has had that kind of speed for the last two years so it’s nice to finally see him put it together.
I definitely feel like I finally had a good weekend and hopefully I can start moving in the direction of top-15 in slalom standings. I don’t know where this puts me right now but I feel like I am moving in that direction.
Mike Day, Technical Head Coach
The amount of mileage that Ted (Ligety) put in on slalom this summer and through the season is clearly starting to show now. For Nolan (Kasper) it took him some time to get up to speed with his injury over the prep period but he is skiing solid and we are excited to go to Schladming and have some fun.
TV
Universal Sports will air the race at 11 a.m and 7 p.m. ET.
RESULTS
Official Results