Janka wins super-G at 2018 Olympics test by large margin

JEONGSEON, South Korea (AP) Former overall World Cup champion Carlo Janka won the super-G test event for the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics by a large margin Sunday, while several pre-race favorites failed to finish their runs in a race that was much more challenging than the downhill a day earlier.

The Swiss racer clocked 1 minute, 26.16 seconds for a 0.82 advantage over Christof Innerhofer of Italy. Vincent Kriechmayr of Austria finished third, 1.06 behind.

''I took some risks and everything worked over the jumps, over the waves. I had a perfect bib today,'' said Janka, who started seventh. ''I had some information on the start from the other guys down in the finish and it worked very well for me.''

Janka has struggled with injuries since winning the overall title six years ago. This was the first super-G victory of his career and his 11th World Cup win in all.

Janka's victory also gave the struggling Swiss men's team its first win of the season.

''We are a small team at the moment because of a lot of injuries,'' Janka said. ''It's good for all the coaches and teammates. Hopefully we take some confidence out of this.

Innerhofer had been an outspoken critic of the downhill course, which he derided as too slow and easy.

''The super-G was different,'' Innerhofer said. ''It was a nice super-G, because as you see there are a lot of guys who (make) mistakes. It's difficult because it's a lot of bumps at beginning and the speed is OK. You start at the steepest point of this downhill so the speed is OK.''

''We had the same speed as for the downhill,'' Innerhofer added. ''It's right to have 95 kph (60 mph) in the super-G.''

Pre-race favorites Dominik Paris of Italy, Kjetil Jansrud of Norway and Andrew Weibrecht of the United States each had trouble.

Paris misjudged an approach a jump and flew way off course, Jansrud did well not to crash after hitting a small bump and losing control and then Weibrecht went wide at the same spot and got stuck in soft snow.

''I just got a bad report,'' Weibrecht said. ''I had a plan but I corrected it on the report. I should have just trusted my plan.

Ten centimeters (4 inches) of snow fell on the course overnight, making conditions softer than Saturday's downhill won by Jansrud.

''There was quite a bit of loose snow on the outside of the track,'' Weibrecht said. ''I could have made it if they had cleared the snow a little bit better. But once I hit that I had no chance of making a recovery.''

This was the first of 28 test events for the next Winter Games and the inexperienced course crew was tested by the fresh snowfall.

''It's their first time ever doing a ski race, so just trying to figure out the spots people might potentially ski, they don't know that,'' Weibrecht said. ''Not their fault.''

Weibrecht also rated the super-G as more difficult than the downhill.

''It's definitely a really tricky course,'' Weibrecht said. ''But when you don't have any room for error on a tricky course that makes it especially difficult.''

Weibrecht then rushed home to Lake Placid, New York, to meet his baby girl, who was born Thursday. Organizers offered him a seat on a private jet to Incheon airport.

Marcel Hirscher of Austria finished seventh to increase his lead in the overall standings to 89 points ahead of Aksel Lund Svindal, the Norwegian who is out injured for the rest of the season.

Svindal's lead in the super-G standings remained 120 points ahead of Weibrecht, with Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway third, 125 points back, after finishing fourth Sunday.

There was sunny weather at race time and about 1,000 fans showed up.

The crowd reserved some of its loudest cheers for the only Korean competitor, Kim Hyeon-tae, who finished 42nd and last, more than seven seconds behind in his World Cup debut.

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Andrew Dampf on Twitter: www.twitter.com/asdampf