World Cup Skiing Roundup : Schmidhauser Wins Race by Edging Out McKinney

Corinne Schmidhauser of Switzerland won Sunday’s World Cup women’s slalom at Park City, Utah, beating American Tamara McKinney by nearly half a second.

Schmidhauser, who finished ninth in the 1986 World Cup standings, had runs of 45.88 and 48.58 seconds to win with a combined time of 1 minute 34.46 seconds. McKinney, of Olympic Valley, Calif., was second with runs for 46.04 and 48.89 and an aggregate time of 1:34.93.

Schmidhauser, 22, said she was “not surprised, but very happy” with the second victory of her career.

Schmidhauser, the two-time Swiss women’s slalom champion, won her first World Cup medal last year when she finished first at Vyskoe Tatry, Czechoslovakia.

McKinney moved into the overall lead with 29 points after two races. McKinney, the 1983 overall champion but only 24th in the standings last season, was seventh in Saturday’s season-opening giant slalom.

Mateja Svet of Yugoslavia, second on Saturday and eighth on Sunday, has 28 points, while Schmidhauser and West Germany’s Michaela Gerg, Saturday’s winner, are tied at 25.

Austrians took the next three places, with Roswitha Steiner third, Karin Budder fourth and Monika Maierhofer fifth.

Steiner, the overall slalom World Cup champion last year, negotiated the first run in 46.29. She maintained third place with a second-run time of 48.70.

Budder had a combined time of 1:36.24 and Maierhofer moved up one place after the first run to take fifth with a time of 1:36.37.

Richard Pramotton of Italy won a men’s World Cup giant slalom, edging Hubert Strolz of Austria and Pirmin Zurbriggen of Switzerland at Sestriere, Italy.

Zurbriggen, fastest in the first of the two heats, blamed a stone, which damaged the edge of his skis in the second run, for his defeat.

“After my edge loosened, I was pleased to finish,” Zurbriggen said.

However, third place was enough to propel Zurbriggen into the lead in the overall Cup standings with 50 points. Pramotton moved into a second-place tie in the standings with Swiss downhill specialist Peter Mueller with 40 points each.

Pramotton, second to Zurbriggen in the first run, also was the second fastest in the second heat and had a total time of 2 minutes 45.08 seconds.

He is the first Italian to record a World Cup victory at a home venue since Michael Mair won a super-giant slalom at Madonna di Campiglio in 1982.

“I skied very very well,” he said. “The course was a bit too flat for me, but I found the icy bits and got in a great run. Between the heats, I’m usually not nervous, but today, I was concerned, I knew how tough Zurbriggen was.”