Intro:

Maria Hoefl-Riesch of Germany won a shortened FIS World Cup ladies downhill on Friday at the Italian resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo, to extend her lead in the downhill and overall standings.

Script:

The Olympia Dellee Tofsane course in the Italian resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo was the scenic venue on Friday for the sixth round of the FIS World Cup ladies downhill.

Due to overnight snow and efforts to prepare the course, the start was delayed for half-an-hour and the course was shortened slightly.

Germany's Maria Hoefl-Riesch was looking to extended her lead in the World Cup downhill and overall standings with victory - and the 29-year-old, who was overall champion in 2011 set the pace with a blistering time of one minute 17.84 seconds.

All of Hoefl-Riesch's race wins this season have come in the fastest discipline - the downhill, with her two previous successes coming at Lake Louise in Canada last month, as the German looks to be in fine form ahead of the Sochi Olympics next month.

Liechtenstein's Tina Weirather has been one of the stars of the winter season, with wins at Val d'Isere on December 22nd and a week earlier at St. Moritz in the Super G event.

Weirather at least threatened to make a contest of it - but she finished second, a full 0.31 seconds behind Hoefl-Riesch.

While Nicole Schmidhofer of Austria pipped Lara Gut and Stacey Cook for the final podium place.

The all-conquering Hoefl-Riesch now leads the discipline standings by 85 points from Weirather, ahead of Saturday's second race at Cortina.

She is also 148 points clear in the overall standings, with Weirather again her closest challenger and Austria's Anna Fenninger - a sixth-placed finisher on Friday - in third place.