Andrea Fischbacher ran away with the women’s Olympic super-G crown in Whistler on Saturday as American Lindsey Vonn’s dreams of a golden double turned to bronze. The 24-year-old took full advantage of a tight and tricky course set by her own coaches to hand Austria a first Alpine skiing gold of the Games with a winning time of one minute 20.14 seconds.

Switzerland’s Didier Defago left his more fancied team-mates in the shade to win the showcase men’s Olympic Alpine skiing downhill at Whistler. The 32-year-old, who had failed to crack the top 20 in two previous Olympic downhills, blasted down the hill with a winning time of one minute 54.31 seconds to become the first Swiss winner in 22 years.

Germany’s Maria Riesch got her groove back to win the women’s super combined crown on Thursday after American Lindsey Vonn crashed and blew her chances of a second gold medal in as many days at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

An emotional Lindsey Vonn hurtled down Whistler mountain to become the first US skier to win the Olympic women’s downhill title. The 25-year-old world champion made a golden start to her “Vonncouver Games” with the stars and stripes on her ski suit, shrugging off her shin injury to beat team mate Julia Mancuso by a hefty 0.56 seconds.

Aksel Lund Svindal won Norway’s fourth gold of the Winter Olympics and his second medal in Vancouver after a near-perfect run in the men’s Super-G. The 27-year-old, who won silver in the men’s downhill on Monday, completed the icy course in one minute 30.34 seconds.

Olympic downhill favourite Lindsey Vonn is getting better each day and welcoming the extra time off she is having due to bad weather. The American, who bruised her shin in training last week and feared she might miss the Games, has only done course inspections so far because the downhill training runs scheduled for Thursday and Friday were cancelled.

The Vancouver Olympics luge competition will resume on Saturday, a day after a Georgian athlete died in a training run, Games organisers said on Friday. “The FIL (International Luge Federation) will resume men’s training Saturday morning with two full training runs prior to the competition taking place as scheduled at 17h00 (0100 GMT),” VANOC said in a statement.

The opening women’s Alpine skiing event of the Vancouver Olympics, the super-combined scheduled for Sunday, will be rescheduled because of poor weather. The event can only take place if a downhill training run has been completed and that will not be possible on Saturday with priority given to the first men’s race, the blue-riband downhill, FIS women’s race director Atle Skaardal said.