Poutiainen tops podium in Zagreb slalom

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Tanja Poutiainen recorded her first World Cup slalom victory in three years on Friday with a stunning high-risk second run that hauled her up from third place to win by a large margin, 0.52 seconds, from Austria’s Marlies Schild, the half-way leader.
      The Finn came down the icy second descent on the Zagreb/Sljeme track as if she meant it, and it paid rich dividends.
      "A great competition, the best of the season so far. As for earlier years, it's hard to make comparisons”, Poutiainen said by phone from Zagreb. "But a win is always a win, and this was one of the sweetest."
     
Poutiainen has five World Cup slalom victories to her name, but the most recent was here in Zagreb, in February 2005, the inaugural holding of this particular event.
      She has won two World Cup giant slalom races, most recently a year ago at Zweisel in Germany.
      Marlies Schild led after the first run by a handy 0.29 seconds from Nicole Hosp, who crashed out on her second descent. Poutiainen was 0.38 seconds off the pace, but was close to a second faster than Schild the second time down.
      Third place in a competition that carried the biggest prize-money of the World Cup season went to Slovakia’s Veronika Zuzulova, who pulled herself up from 7th and was the only competitor apart from Poutiainen who managed to get under 58 seconds on the second run.
      She eventually fell just 0.16 seconds shy of Schild’s time.
     
Tanja Poutiainen collected a cheque for EUR 60,000 less tax for her win, though she pointed out that money was not the first thing one thinks about when going down the hill.
      "This win was the result of hard work: Janek and I have been putting a lot of effort into the slalom since last spring", said Putiainen in a nod to the Finnish head coach Janek Slivnik. "This win was not such a big shock in the end, even if it has kept us waiting a while."
      In fairness, Poutiainen has been in the top 8 in every slalom competition this season, and this is her third visit to the podium this year.
     
The runner-up spot on Friday lifted Marlies Schild to the head of the slalom World Cup standings.
      She already has four slalom wins on the circuit this season. Poutiainen’s consistency has put her into 3rd place with 452 points, 88 behind the leader, and 13 behind Nicole Hosp, who has two wins.
      Poutiainen is also fifth in the giant slalom rankings, and 8th overall.
     
There are two events left, in Arber in Germany at the beginning of March and at Bormio in Italy on March 14th. Tanja Poutiainen won the slalom and giant slalom World Cup titles in 2005, and was a silver medallist in the giant slalom at Sestriere in 2006.
      She also has two silver medals, in slalom and giant slalom, from the 2005 World Championships in Santa Caterina, Italy.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Double silver medallist Tanja Poutiainen is also Finland´s biggest-earning female athlete (15.2.2005)

Links:
  FIS Tanja Poutiainen

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