German Petra Haltmayr won the super G on the final day of the Winterstart World Cup. But, despite a continual light snow that started before dawn and a first-start in the field of 63 skiers, Caroline Lalive (Steamboat Springs, CO) collected the third top-3 result of her World Cup career and gave the US women their first podium.

Haltmayr, whose only other World Cup win came a year ago when she won the first of two DHs at Lake Louise, skied No. 6 and finished with a time of 1:15.09. Second place went to Carole Montillet of France in 1:15.77 and Lalive, who finished second in a combined event each of the last two years, finished in 1:15.88.

Jonna Mendes (Heavenly, CA), a dazed 45th Friday in the DH after being 13th Thursday in her comeback from a broken bone in her ankle suffered last March, was 10th, the first super G top-10 of her career. Her time was 1:16.41 while Kirsten Clark (Raymond, ME), troubled by fogged goggles, was 19th (1:16.84) and Katie Monahan (Aspen, CO) in 25th at 1:17.04

Lalive, sporting a purple swipe under her left eye, a memento from the slalom pole that smacked her 10 days earlier at Copper Mountain, accepted congratulations from foreign competitors, including Austria's former World Cup champion Renate Goetschl, with whom Lalive shares a waxing technician, and Italy's Isolde Kostner, who won the two DHs Thursday and Friday.

"Overall, this just builds your confidence," the skier from Colorado said. "I don't want to jump ahead of myself and make any predictions, or anything of that sort. This is gonna take me into the next race feeling a lot more confident and excited. I'm taking it one race at a time...

"You never know. Skiing is weird. Sometimes you feel great and you're butt-slow, and sometimes you feel like you're out of control and you're fast," Lalive told reporters. "I felt like it was a good run and I just had to wait."

Mendes said the continual snow softened the light, but didn't entirely disrupt the skiers. After training in two days of overcast weather, the first two days of racing were in sunshine...but the super G was a different story. "Our training runs were kind of like this -- it's light but you can't see as well as you could if it's sunny and you can see the snow. It was a little flat light, but the course was well taken care of."

The big swing in her results was another reminder that in coming back from an injury she had to be patient and keep plugging. "I approached it like it was a new day," Mendes said. "I've never been injured before, so I don't know how it goes. And I certainly don't know what happened [Friday]...but I have to stay patient and keep doing my best."

"Still room for improvement," said DH/SG Head Coach Jim Tracy, "but the girls are skiing well. The young ones [Lindsey Kildow (Vail, CO) and Julia Mancuso (Squaw Valley, CA) are paying their dues, but Lindsey looked like she was headed for a top-10 and Julia probably would've been top-20, so it's a good start for the season for us."

Head Coach Marjan Cernigoj said of the three races her in lake Louise, "The whole team stepped up. This was a great weekend; it started with the downhills. I'm really happy for Caroline. After a little slump in slalom and GS, this should give her incredible confidence."

Most of the women will stay in Lake Louise and race part of the Nor Am Cup schedule, including a pair of super Gs and a FIS-B super G, before heading to Europe.

— Courtesy, US Ski Team