By Brian Homewood
GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (Reuters) - Double Olympic gold medalist Maria Riesch handed Lindsey Vonn a rare downhill defeat on Wednesday and also forced her American friend to put her third successive overall World Cup title on hold.
Vonn, who has already clinched the World Cup downhill title, finished second, only the second time she has failed to win a World Cup downhill in eight outings this season.
Riesch, who won the combined and slalom events in Vancouver, tore down the Kandahar in one minute 34.82 seconds, to finish nearly half a second in front of Vonn, the Olympic downhill champion. Anja Paerson of Sweden was third.
Vonn is now 225 points ahead of Riesch in the overall World Cup standings and the German admitted she had no realistic chance of catching up in the giant slalom, Super G and slalom events later in the week.
"There's no way I can make up more than 200 points," she told Reuters. "I would have loved to win the overall World Cup and I've fought hard all season.
"But I can't complain about my season, it was nice to win the downhill in front of my own crowd. I achieved what I wanted by winning the two medals.
"My main goal this week is to keep my slalom World Cup title. I was not so nervous before this downhill race."
Later, she told reporters: "It's never easy to ski with the pressure and expectation of your home crowd."
Vonn said she had no complaints.
"I made some mistakes, my line was not as clean as I was hoping and I'm glad for Maria that she won," she said.
"I haven't won it yet, there's still something to play for" she added.
"It's not finished yet, it's not likely that she will catch me but nothing's finished."
(additional reporting by Manuele Lang; editing by Miles Evans)
