ALTENMARKT, Austria -- Jana Soltysova of Czechoslovakia surprised herself and stunned the world's best women skiers Wednesday by winning the downhill and scoring the first World Cup victory ever for her country.
Soltysova raced down the 2,110 meter course, with a drop of 560 meters, in one minute, 25:11 seconds to defeat Doris de Agostini of Switzerland, who was clocked in 1:25.19.
Torill Fjeldstad of Norway was third in 1:25.36 and Cornelia Proell of Austria fourth, with 1:25.41. Heavily favored Marie-Theres Nadig of Switzerland, winner of the two previous World Cup downhill races this season, was a disappointing 16th.
'I really did not expect to win against such renowned downhill specialists as Nadig and de Agfostini of Switzerland,' Soltysova said. 'My victory came as a surprise to our entire team and we are all very, very happy.'
Soltysova said her victory came especially unexpected as she hardly did any downhill training before the season.
'We concentrated mainly on slalom and giant slalom practice in pre-season training at Hintertux in Austria,' she said. 'I was hampered in pre-season training by a knee injury suffered during a fun soccer match in our training camp at Hintertux.'
The best previous finish for the 21-year-old Czech in a World Cup downhill was a second place finish last winter at Zell Am See, Austria.
'I like fast tracks because I am not bothered by high speed,' she said. 'However, I don't like to jump as most of my rivals do and therefore I was not too confident on this bumpy track.'
Soltysova, though, was probably helped by a fall which Nadig took in a practice run on Tuesday. Nadig said she was not looking for excuses but there was little doubt that her unexpected defeat and extremely poor performance was caused by the shock of the accident.
'It definitely was my worst race ever. I don't even want to talk about it,' said Nadig.
Nadig suffered minor bruises in her spill Tuesday but later complained of severe headaches. Her fall was her first on a World Cup downhill track in five years.
Despite her poor finish Wednesday, Nadig held her overall lead with 136 points ahead of Fabienne Serrat of France with 83 and Irene Epple of West Germany with 71 points.
Hanni Wenzel of Liechtenstein, the reigning world champion and winner of two Olympic gold medals, has not been participating on the World Cup circuit because of an injury. She seriously injured some knee ligaments in training before the season but is expected to resume racing next month.
