Kirsten Clark (Raymond, ME), returning to the hill where she won her first World Cup two years ago, grabbed her second podium of the season Saturday, finishing third behind Austrian Michaela Dorfmeister in the third DH of the young season. Snow, which started at mid-race, slowed the back of the field so that 29 of the first 30 skiers finished in the top 30.

In the start of the women's lone combined World Cup calculation, Dorfmeister won in 1:43.53. Teammate Brigitte Obermoser was second in 1:43.99 and Clark, running ninth in a race where 29 of the 30 fastest skiers started in the first 30 (only No. 30, Swiss Ella Alpiger, who started 46th, came from outside the top 30), was timed in 1:44.38.

"Clarky stuck her nose in it. She was going again for the win," said DH/SG Head Coach Jim Tracy. "We’ve gotta find another six-tenths in her racing because she's skiing so well but she's been .6 out consistently."

Her performance moved Clark – who went back on the hill after the race to train slalom with the other U.S. skiers competing in the combined for the weekend – up two notches to fifth in the overall standings behind Croatian Janica Kostelic, who tied for sixth place with Canadian Mel Turgeon in the DH. For Clark, a Carrabassett Valley Academy grad who also was third in the opening downhill at Lake Louise two weeks ago, it was her fifth top-5 result of the winter.

With temperatures in the upper 20s, Jonna Mendes (Heavenly, CA) skied 20th and finished 17th in 1:45.33 with Caroline Lalive (Steamboat Springs, CO) running 13th and finishing 20th. Julia Mancuso (Olympic Valley, CA) skied 36th and was 34th, Libby Ludlow moved up from 59th start to 36th while Alison Powers (Winter Park, CO) and Katie Monahan (Aspen, CO) started in the 40s and finished 41st and 42nd, respectively.

"We’ve gotta find another six-tenths in her racing because she's skiing so well but she's been .6 out consistently." — U.S. Coach Jim Tracy, on Kirsten Clark

"My training runs weren't going that great – everyone was stacked in there and I was losing time on the top flat, I'd be about six-tenths out right away…in the first 20 seconds," Clark said. "Today, though, I started early, which helped because the weasther ended up playing a little bit of a role. I knew I'd been skiing well through the turns and the technical part, so I tried to get as low as I could on that top flat – Alex [Sopotnik, wax technician] did another great job on my skis and I just went…and then I had to wait.

"I was a hundredth ahead of the Swedish girl [Jenny Lindvall-Vilar] and she's not a downhiller, so I wondered, but…something works for me on this hill. The weather came in a day late. It was supposed to be here [Friday] with the last training run in bad weather but it wasn't too bad; when we woke up today, it was overcast and you could see storms around so you knew it was be messy.

"We had a hold after 32 or 33 skiers came down, and the organizers waited it out. We waited about half an hour and it snoweda bit more, so the girls in the back didn't have much of a chance," Clark said.

According to Tracy, "Jonna skied the top and the bottom well but had a couple of mistakes in the middle. And Caroline did the same – made a couple of mistakes in the middle and couldn't carry that speed into the bottom, and that finished her.

"The snow started around racer 25 or 26," Tracy said, "and that was it. It was over. No chance for anyone after that point. I had told the girls in every team meeting including [Friday] night, 'This is Lenzerheide. Anything can happen. Be ready because something always happens here.' And it did today…again.

"All our girls skied well, though. Julia's still got some sore shins and Libby skied an outstanding race, but the snow had slowed things so much by then that she didn't have a chance. Libby skied great and she'd've been in the points but she made a mistake at the bottom where a lot of the girls almost ended their season [Friday] in training; she hit her chin on her knee but she hung in there, seeing stars and blinking her eyes for the last 13, 14 seconds…but she's been so tough this year and didn't miss points [top 30] by much. Same with Powy and Katie – good technical run but slow snow."

The women run the third slalom of the season Sunday to complete the combined calculation. In addition to Clark, the other three U.S. skiers running combined are Lalive, Mendes and Mancuso.

— Courtesy, U.S. Ski Team