Maze captures women's super-combined

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MERIBEL, France, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Tina Maze of Slovenia won the women's World Cup super-combined in France Sunday by nearly a full second over Austrian Nicole Hosp.

Maze, the overall women's points leader in the World Cup series, had a combined-run time of 1 minute, 59.28 seconds, 0.82 faster than Hosp.

Maze, who won the only other super-combined of the season, increased her point total in the overall standings to 1,844 and leads Maria Hoefl-Riesch of Germany by a comfortable 958 points with nine events left in the World Cup season.

But it was not an easy victory in the soft snow of Meribel, Maze said afterward. Her sharp downhill run was followed up by a relatively slow 44.26 in the slalom portion.

"Super-combined days are very long," said Maze. "I was so tired that I almost skied out twice in the slalom run and still don't know how I managed to find the energy to stay on the track."

Austrian Michaela Kirschgasser took third place followed by Julia Mancuso of the United States, who was clocked at 2:01.00, which was 0.36 seconds faster than fifth-place Marie-Michelle Gagnon of Canada.

"In some places we got like two feet of snow last night," said Mancuso. "It was really soft so those slalom athletes definitely had a good advantage with the lowered downhill start and the better start positions."