Janica Kostelic has a great chance to clinch her first Olympic medal in today's combined event after winning the slalom part of the competition.

The 2001 Overall World Cup champion beat by 1,10 seconds the reigning combined World Champion, Martina Ertl from Germany, while the 1997 World Champion, Renate Goetschl, was only 4th at 2,22 seconds.

The Austrian made a big mistake at the middle of her second run which allowed Switzerland's Marlies Oester to move up in third place. But Oester is not such a good downhiller normally to be a serious contender for a medal.

Canada's Genevieve Simard moved back from 4th to 5th place while Michaela Dorfmeister, the reigning downhill World Champion, finished 7th at 3,72 seconds.

A clean run for Janica

Janica, who had fun skiing on the downhill course last week during her practice runs, needs now a clean run to conquer her first medal in a major event. Last year, she skied out in the combined slalom and was only 5th in the slalom race.

Ertl, a fine downhiller on difficult courses, is a strong rival now - with a very aggressive run in the downhill, the Bavarian can gain more than a full second on Janica even if course run is much shorter today than the usual downhill- 2237 meters instead of 2694!

On Tuesday, Ertl took part in a training run after the downhill competition and set a time of 1.42,00 - less than two seconds slower than Renate which still has a chance to beat everybody with a perfect run.

Janica knows that she will have to fight hard to successfully defend her lead in the downhill part of this combined.

"One second advance over Ertl and two over Goetschl are not so much, may be not enough because my downhill skiing has not been so great lately" she said. "I didn't train it enough to be able to take a lot of risks and my right knee is quite painful today".

"I'll do my best for what ever medal - after all, any place on the podium is nice after this tough season".

Her brother Ivica and her mother Mijca are planned to land here at 6 PM local time - early enough to eventually attend the Medal Ceremony at downtown Salt Lake City.