Vonn adds to Cup lead

WHISTLER, Canada -- American skier Lindsey Vonn went winless in two World Cup whistle-stop races at Whistler Mountain -- finishing second in Friday’s downhill by one-hundredth of a second and sixth in Sunday’s super combined.

Vonn, though, got what she came for in terms of her quest to become the first American woman since Tamara McKinney in 1983 to win the World Cup overall title.

Vonn gained a little standings distance on Nicole Hosp of Austria, the defending overall champion. The racers began the Whistler weekend tied in the overall standings with 983 points.

Vonn left with a 54-point advantage.

“The goal today was to fight, hard, try not to lose ground on Nicky, and I think I did that,” Vonn said after she completed the super combined. “It wasn’t another win but it was a solid performance, and I’m looking forward to the next three weeks.”

Vonn had moved 64 points ahead Friday after her second-place finish in the downhill, and gave only 10 points back after Hosp finished fourth in Sunday’s event.

The race, a super-giant slalom in the morning combined with one run of slalom in the afternoon, was won by Maria Riesch of Germany with a two-run time of 2 minutes 10.07.

Riesch earned 100 points for the victory and is third in the overall standings.

With eight races left, Vonn leads with 1,103 points, followed by Hosp at 1,049 and Riesch at 981.

The World Cup circuit moves this week to Germany for two races. After that it’s two races in Switzerland before the World Cup finals in Bormio, Italy.

The World Cup races at Whistler served as the only Alpine test events on the Olympic course before the 2010 Vancouver Games.

The hill received mostly raves from competitors, although some complained about having the speed and technical events on the same mountain.

Bode Miller, the opinionated American, described the tracks as “flat, moderate, very moderate courses,” but said they could be tough depending on the snow conditions.

“But with the terrain available here,” Miller added, “it seems crazy to run the Olympics on these particular hills.”

John Furlong, chief executive for the Vancouver Organizing Committee, bristled a bit when informed of Miller’s comments Saturday at a media reception in Whistler.

Furlong said he had not heard “a single comment in my direction about that.”

Furlong added: “The feedback we’ve had, and there’s been a lot of it, is that the courses are very exciting and challenging.”

The only “problem” this week may have been the Whistler weather. Often unpredictable and inclement, it was mostly ideal for ski racing. Furlong said that didn’t give his organizers a chance to work on worst-case scenarios. All four World Cup races this week went off on schedule.

“Honestly,” Furlong said, “we were hoping for at least one bad day. The chances of going through 17 days [at the Olympics] without a bad day are pretty slim.”

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com