By USSA

KVITFJELL, Norway – Travis Ganong (Squaw Valley) felt all the good sensations of a solid run in Friday’s Audi FIS Ski World Cup downhill, a make-up race from the canceled December event at Lake Louise, Canada, leading the U.S. in eighth place.

Slovenia’s Bostjan Kline took his first career World Cup victory Friday, nipping Austria’s Matthias Mayer by just 0.19 seconds and Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud by 0.20 in second and third respectively.

Seeing and feeling the course are the two critical components of good ski racing. So when one sensation goes wrong, the other sensation of a finely tuned athlete usually picks up the slack. For Ganong, he felt like he put down a great run Friday, and indeed he did, but the seeing part didn’t go so well.

“I skied really well and it easily could have been a winning run,” Ganong said. “But on the third gate, I hit the gate and got snow in my goggles somehow. So it was like I was skiing in a blizzard. Every time I would hit a bump, the snow would go up and down inside my goggles. It was just kind of distracting the whole way down. But it was still really good skiing.”

Jared Goldberg (Holladay, Utah) put down his second top-20 result of the season, finishing 14th. Bryce Bennett(Squaw Valley) and Andrew Weibrecht (Lake Placid, N.Y.) also snuck into the points, finishing 27th and 30th, respectively. Brennan Rubie (Salt Lake City, Utah) was 43rd and Tommy Biesemeyer (Keene, N.Y.) was 49th.

Austria’s Marcel Hirscher, who did not race Friday, continues to lead the overall World cup standings with 1,275 points. Jansrud overtook Italy’s Peter Fill in the overall World Cup downhill standings with his second-place finish. Jansrud (307 points) leads Fill (294), who finished 16th Friday, by 13 points.