Last weekend's World Cup stop for alpine speed races at Kvitfjell, Norway turned out to be pretty much a draw between overall contenders Bode Miller, 27, of New Hampshire and Benjamin Raich, 27, of Austria.
Miller, who hasn't won a race since Dec. 13, finished fourth in Saturday's downhill and fifth in Sunday's super giant slalom. Raich ended up 12th in downhill and fourth in SG. So Miller, who started the weekend with a 31-point lead, extended it to 52 points.
Austria's Hermann Maier, 32, won both speed races in Norway. Sunday's SG victory was the 50th of his World Cup career. Maier is the defending World Cup overall champion.
Miller, meanwhile, is bidding to become the first U.S. man to win the overall World Cup since Phil Mahre last accomplished the feat in 1983.
With four races remaining Miller has 1348 overall points to Raich's 1296. Maier is third with 1166 points, Austria's Michael Walchhofer fourth with 910 and U.S. racer Daron Rahlves, 31, fifth with a distant 804 points.
The World Cup finals featuring all four alpine skiing disciplines—DH, SG, GS and SL—are March 9-13 at Lenzerheide, Switzerland. If Raich can keep up the pressure on Miller in the speed events, the outcome could boil down to the gates, which would favor the Austrian going for his first crown.
This season, Miller has DNFd seven of the eight slaloms and three of the seven GSs. With 340 points, he is now in third place in the GS standings behind first-place Raich (363 points) and Thomas Grandi, 32, of Banff, Alberta, Canada (340 points).
Walchhofer, 29, has a nearly insurmountable 631-538 lead over Miller in the DH standings with one race left. Maier now leads Miller 424-370 in the super giant slalom standings. And Raich tops the slalom ranks with an unreachable 502 points.
So, Austrians are in charge of all four disciplines. Only Miller and Grandi have a chance to crack an Austrian sweep this coming weekend.
World Cup women sampled the 2006 Olympic speed run at San Sicario, Italy two weekends ago.
There, last year's overall queen Anja Paerson, 23, of Sweden widened the gap with her chief rival, 23-year-old Janica Kostelic of Croatia.
Paerson won the Italian DH and SG to stretch her eight-point lead over San Sicario combined winner Kostelic to 63 points. Paerson leads 1241 to 1178 with only four races remaining, which are the World Cup finals. American Lindsey Kildow, 20, is sixth in the overall with 828 points.
Kildow is within striking distance of the two speed discipline titles.
Here are updated standings by women's discipline—
Downhill: 1—Renate Goetschl (Aust.) 467. 2—Hilde Gerg (Germ.) 435. 4—Kildow 384.
Super giant slalom: 1—Michaela Dorfmeister (Aust.) 393. 2—Goetschl 371. 3—Kildow 346.
Slalom: 1—Tanja Poutiainen (Fin.) 520. Giant slalom: 1—Anja Paerson 410. 2—Poutiainen 381.
