01-10-2020, 12:56 AM
LENZERHEIDE, Switzerland -- Marcel Hirscher clinched his third straight overall World Cup title on Saturday but couldnt prevent Ted Ligety from winning his fifth season-long giant slalom trophy. Derek Harper Jersey . A race that came down to a few hundredths of a second saw Hirscher finish fourth, giving him enough points to clinch the sports biggest prize. Ligety won the race and thereby tied the Austrian on points in the season-long discipline standings, giving the American the GS title on a tiebreaker as he had more race victories. "Its an unbelievable happy day," said Hirscher, content to concede the discipline to the American dubbed "Mr. GS" by race announcers. "My big goal was the overall World Cup title and I got it and Im so happy," said the 25-year-old Hirscher, the first man to win three in a row since American Phil Mahre completed the feat in 1983. Hirscher needed 19 points to overtake Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway, who led the standings going into the race but skied out in the first run. Fourth place gave the Austrian 50 points. Hirscher completed Austrias first overall title double since 2002, after Anna Fenninger clinched her first womens title this week. They both come from villages near Salzburg and raced each other as juniors. Ligety earned his victory in a crowd-pleasing race by just 0.03 seconds ahead of runner-up Alexis Pinturault of France, in a two-run combined time of 2 minutes, 15.63 seconds. "Im super-thrilled. That was by the skin of my teeth today," Ligety said. He still relied on a big assist from first-run leader Felix Neureuther of Germany to make clinch the discipline title as the narrow margins all fell Ligetys way. Ligety, the Olympic champion in GS, was second-fastest in the morning and had time in the start house to absorb the second-leg target set by Hirscher. Hirscher finished outside provisional leader Pinturaults time, leaving Ligety an opening. The 29-year-old American came down barely faster than Pinturault, drawing applause from Hirscher who was in the finish area already knowing he was overall champion. Ligety then needed his good friend Neureuther to finish second or third in the narrow time gap between himself and Hirscher. Neureuther did it in the tightest way possible, finishing 0.01 ahead of Hirscher, who was relegated to fourth. With 10 fewer points awarded for fourth than third, he fell into a tie with Ligety on 560 over the eight-race season. Ligety got the tiebreaker with five World Cup race wins against Hirschers two. "Felix, I owe a lot of beers," Ligety said. Hirscher was smiling later, after watching Ligety and Neureuther roll around the finish-area snow in celebration. "He is not allowed to travel to Austria. It is over. Just kidding," Hirscher said of Neureuthers intervention. They will renew their rivalry Sunday for the season-long slalom title. "He is very mad about me so its going to be very close," said Neureuther, who leads Hirscher by five points in the slalom standings. Henrik Kristoffersen of Norway is also in contention. Svindal faded again, extending his disappointing series of results since leaving the Sochi Olympics early, affected by allergies and without a medal. He is not competing in Sundays slalom. "It was a good season but it could have been fantastic," said Svindal, who won the World Cup titles in downhill and super-G though all but conceded the overall title to Hirscher earlier in the week. "That was too bad, because I had a really good opportunity to win the biggest thing a ski racer can win," said Svindal, a two-time former overall champion. Ligety completed a race double for the U.S. team Saturday, with Mikaela Shiffrin earlier winning her fifth World Cup slalom this season. The American anthem played four times in quick succession for a crowd of 10,500 at the Swiss venue -- twice each for Ligety and Shiffrins race and season title victories. The Austrian anthem will dominate Sunday, when Hirscher and Fenninger get their giant crystal globes. Mark Aguirre Jersey . Mike Ribeiro had a goal and an assist as Phoenix held on to snap a two-game losing streak with a 4-3 win over the Edmonton Oilers on Friday. Rolando Blackman Jersey . Ramon, 30, played in a career-high 97 games with the Goldeyes in 2013. He also matched a career-high eight home runs and posted 52 RBI. https://www.cheapmavericks.com/783l-just...ricks.html . CEO Steve Koonin on Tuesday told the Hawks flagship radio station that he made the decision to discipline Ferry but allowed him to keep his job managing the team. He did not say what the punishment was, but noted that he relied on a law firms three-month investigation of Ferry and him describing Deng as someone who has a little African in him.JEREZ, Spain - Sebastian Vettels career with Ferrari is off to an encouraging start, with the German driver quickest in Formula One pre-season testing for the second day running.The four-time champion joined Ferrari after a miserable season with Red Bull last year. The German finished fifth overall, failed to win a race and secured only four podium finishes compared to 13 Grand Prix wins the previous season.Vettel clocked a best lap of 1 minute, 20.984 seconds on Monday — almost two seconds better than he managed on Sunday.The reference is still Mercedes ... Mercedes did a great job last season that left all others looking a bit pale, Vettel said. I havent driven the 2014 Ferrari so I have no reference. I have made sure over the winter that Ive taken in all the different buttons and switches.Vettel thinks it may take him some time to make his mark at Ferrari.There are so many new things to come to terms with, and that includes me. You take the current car and try to squeeze the maximum out of it, he said. So the priority for this year: get the maximum out of the season and develop as a team.Sauber driver Felipe Nasr of Brazil was second best in 1:21.867 and Williams driver Valtteri Bottas of Finland third quickest in 1:22.319.Defending champion Lewis Hamilton was fourth fastest in Mercedes and cut short his session about an hour before the end.I got a feel for the carr quite quickly. Antoine Rigaudeau Jersey. The balance obviously wasnt perfect as were not working on setup yet, so it could be a lot better, he said. But the priority right now is to put in the laps, not set fast times, and there were lots of positives today.With teammate Nico Rosberg watching from the pit lane, Hamilton clocked up 91 laps — considerably less than the mammoth 157 Rosberg did on Sunday — but more than Vettels 89.Hamilton was called back to the garage with an hour remaining due to a water system issue on the Mercedes — just as the rain started to lash down on the Jerez circuit in southern Spain.Max Verstappen, the youngest driver in F1 history at 17 years old, was fifth quickest for Toro Rosso.Meanwhile, Red Bulls day was limited to just 18 laps after Russian driver Daniil Kvyat, who was signed to replace Vettel, damaged the RB11s front wing after going off track.Sometimes mistakes happen and theres nothing you can do about them, Kvyat said. We still maximized our running with what we had and hopefully we can recover from that.The team said it hopes to have a replacement wing delivered in time for Tuesdays testing.It was another bad day for McLaren, which has switched to Honda engines this season, with Jenson Button doing only six laps — the same tally as Fernando Alonso managed on Sunday.Buttons best lap was more than 30 seconds slower than Vettels. ' ' '