Star skier Tina Maze has revealed she received a death threat just hours before becoming the first person to break 2000 World Cup points in a season in Germany.
The 29-year-old, who won the overall World Cup, received the threat in an email Saturday before being put under police protection for the rest of the weekend.
Slovenia’s Maze, who finished fourth in Sunday’s super-G after winning Saturday’s downhill race, was given extra security after event organizers were sent the threat.
“It’s bizarre, I can only laugh about it,” Maze told reporters after her fourth place in Sunday’s race left her with 2074 points for the season.
“I don’t really want to talk about it; it was just a normal day at the office.
“I have a clean conscience; I haven’t done anything bad, some people are just jealous.
“I haven’t seen anything myself, the threat came through the organizers, but I have never felt as safe as I did today.
“If whoever is responsible wanted to distract me or put me off, they didn’t succeed.
“But it’s not easy when you have the feeling that something can happen.”
On Saturday, Maze became only the third woman to win a World Cup race in all give disciplines in a single season, matching Austria’s Petra Kronberger (1990-91) and Croatia’s Janica Kostelic (2005-6).
She also became the first person to have eclipsed Hermann Maier’s previous mark of 2000 set in the 1999-2000 season.
And despite the threat on her life, Maze has confirmed she will remain in Garmisch for the next three days before moving on to Ofterschwang in south-west Germany for the next World Cup event.
“We regret that this has happened very much. It is very, very serious,” Peter Fischer, head of the organizing committee in Garmisch-Partenkirchen told reporters.
“We received an anonymous email and contacted the police immediately, who took over handling the matter.
“We don’t know if this was an individual acting alone or a group of people.
“We had to take this very seriously and the main thing was keeping Tina safe, so we achieved that goal.
“It’s good that she is strong minded and still felt good being here.
“She has said she will stay here for three days before going onto Ofterschwang for the next race.”
Meanwhile, Austria’s Anna Fenninger claimed her second World Cup win of the season Sunday by claiming victory in the Super-G.
The 23-year-old, who won the world super combined title on the Khandahar course at the venue in 2011, clocked a time of 1 minute 20.43 seconds while Germany’s Maria Hoefl-Riesch finished 0.20 seconds back.
It was Fenninger’s second win of the season having won the giant slalom in Semmering, Austria, in December.
“I deserved it, I was ready for this win and I believed in myself,” Fenninger told reporters.
“I made a few mistakes on the top part and really risked everything on the bottom section, but everything came together. It feels good.”
Elsewhere, Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway won the men’s World Cup super-G title with victory at Kvitfjell.
Svindal claimed his 21st career victory in a time of 1 minute 29.79 seconds, finishing ahead of Austria’s Georg Streitberger and Italy’s Werner Heel.
Svindal is now just 29 points behind overall World Cup leader Marcel Hirscher of Austria.
