The Super G season finally got underway on Friday with the opening race in Val Gardena, Italy. Upper Austrian Daniel Hemetsberger has big plans for this year's speed season, especially for his specialty discipline Super G! So he went to the start highly focused and motivated.

With an outstanding run, Hemetsberger and his equipment, prepared by service man Franz Knauss, were only beaten by Vincent Kriechmayer by a wafer-thin 0.03 sec margin and can celebrate a perfect start to the new season with second place.

Speaking of a perfect start, Bryce Bennett already had one on Thursday when he won the first downhill in Val Gardena for the second time since 2021. Accordingly, he went into the start with the red bib as the leader of the Downhill World Cup and confirmed with an outstanding 3rd place that Thursday's performance was no fluke.

What a weekend for the tall US American and his service man Leo Mussi, who were only beaten by Italy's Dominik Paris and Val Gardena specialist Alexander Aamodt Kilde on Saturday.

The speed circus is now moving on to Bormio, Italy, where the next downhill and the next Super G will take place between Christmas and New Year's Eve.