Norway's Mowinckel wins World Cup downhill at Cortina

Ragnhild Mowinckel won Saturday's alpine skiing World Cup downhill at Cortina d'Ampezzo, claiming the honours in a race blighted by interruptions for crashes and driving winds.

Norwegian Mowinckel claimed her first ever World Cup downhill win with a time of one minute and 33.5 seconds, beating American Jacqueline Wiles by 0.35sec.

"I'm extremely happy with how I skied and how it went, today is one of those days I felt really proud of myself," said Mowinckel.

"I hit the right spots today, and also it was a huge difference coming down (the bottom) here today, because yesterday I was really bad here, so I fixed something and apparently that worked."

Reigning downhill champion Sofia Goggia, who finished 0.44sec off the pace in third, had been leading when the race was interrupted for over half an hour due to winds judged dangerous for competitors just 17 runs into the event.

Goggia is still on course for a fourth straight World Cup title in the discipline as she leads the standings by 89 points from Friday's downhill winner Stephanie Venier.

Mowinckel trails Goggia by 208 points in the downhill standings and is 11th in the overall race for the crystal globe.

"It wasn't the best descent, technically speaking, but there was character and grit. I got hit with a lot of wind... I made some mistakes because it moved me around," Goggia told RAI. 

"I had to deal with a lot of wind... having to wait for so many minutes and the conditions changing made a big difference to the final result," she added later after being knocked off top spot.

The long stoppage was one of several on a difficult day in Cortina, with Isabella Wright having to be taken away by helicopter early on after losing control at the difficult Delta jump and slamming into the safety netting.

The American was spared any serious injuries and was later seen chatting with fellow skiers around the finish area.

Mowinckel won a race missing American skiing icon Mikaela Shiffrin and reigning downhill Olympic champion Corinne Suter after both suffered painful crashes on Friday.

Suter was ruled out of the rest of the season after suffering serious ligament damage to her left knee during the first of two downhill races in Cortina.

Shiffrin meanwhile will take part neither in Sunday's super-G, again at Cortina, nor the giant slalom at Kronplatz on Tuesday.

However Shiffrin remains top of the overall standings on 1,209 points, 295 ahead of Lara Gut-Behrami, who finished joined fifth on Saturday alongside Austria's Venier.