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High five Kostelic wins fifth straight World Cup slalom race
Updated: Thursday December 28, 2000 8:27 PM
SEMMERING, Austria (Reuters) -- Croatian teenager Janica Kostelic made it five World Cup slalom wins out of five in a night race on Thursday despite disliking floodlit slopes. Kostelic, 18, produced two near-perfect runs to post a winning aggregate time of one minute 35.06 seconds on the Zauberberg slope in Semmering, a small resort some 75 kilometers south of Vienna. Switzerland's Sonja Nef made a slalom podium for the first time this season, finishing second in 1:35.70 ahead of Norway's Trine Bakke, who improved on a first run sixth place for an overall time of 1:36.35.
Kostelic won two slaloms and a combined event before career-threatening injuries to both knees brought a premature end to her season last winter. The record of consecutive World Cup slalom victories is held by former Olympic champion Vreni Schneider of Switzerland, who won all seven slaloms in the 1988-89 season and the opening race of the following winter. Kostelic, who won this season's slaloms in Park City, Aspen and, twice, Sestriere, had said she suffered from visibility problems in night races. To get accustomed to floodlit slopes, she acted as a fore-runner in a men's night slalom in Sestriere on December 11. Kostelic leads the slalom standings with 500 points from Germany's Martina Ertl, who finished 11th on Thursday. Ertl still holds the overall World Cup lead with 634 points,
ahead of Kostelic on 619.
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