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Julia Mancuso led an American one-two in a women's World Cup Super-combined event on Sunday after favorite Anja Paerson of Sweden made a mistake in sight of the finish line.

Mancuso, the fastest woman from the opening downhill leg, held on to the lead in the slalom to beat team-mate Lindsey Kildow by just 6/100 of a second. Mancuso was 3rd in Saturday's downhill in which Kildow crashed at mid-course after clocking the fastest intermediate time.

Overall World Cup leader Marlies Schild of Austria, the winner at Reiteralm last month, was 3rd - 83/100 behind Mancuso, with another American, Resi Stiegler, 4th.

Czech's Zarka Zahrobska confirmed her strong form with a brilliant slalom run in the afternoon to take 5th place after clearly dominating the rest of the field in that leg, beating Mancuso by 1,42 seconds.

Former overall World Cup champion Paerson, 4th after the downhill leg, had the best slalom pedigree of the leaders but missed a gate just meters from the finish line after setting a fast intermediate time.

The Olympic slalom champion who is still looking for her first win since undergoing knee surgery in March, looked stunned in the finish area and hurried away without speaking to reporters. She has been quite unlucky in recent weeks, skiing out or crashing in most of her technical races this year.

Nicole Hosp was 6th which allowed her to stay in the footsteps of Schild in the Overall standings.

Mancuso was happy
The 22-year-old Mancuso, who won her maiden World Cup victory only last month in Val d'Isère, presented a contrasting picture, collapsing to the snow on her back with her skis in the air and beaming with delight as she got up.

"It is so cool to be up on the podium with my friend," said Mancuso, who won the first of two downhills in Val d'Isère, France. "It is so much more fun for me when I can share the podium with a team-mate."

Mancuso, 22, won the Olympic giant slalom title in Turin last year. She underwent surgery to correct a hip problem in the off-season and said she had not been sure whether to race slalom this season.

"I think that my new slalom boots were really the secret to today's win," she told reporters. "I didn't do my best slalom run but as you can see if was enough for me to make it across the finish line with victory in my pocket. It's great to win a Super-combined because you have to ski well in two different specialties on the same day. I never did well in that discipline so far."

Last month, the Californian achieved a strong Super-G leg at Reiteralm in the first Super-combined of the season, but a poor slalom afterwards and finished a distant 16th at the end.

She was expecting more in Saturday's downhill after clocking the fastest time in the training run on Friday, but apparently gusts of wind slowed her down in the upper part of the course.

It's the fourth win for the US Ski Team this season and the first in that new World Cup specialty. So far, Janica Kostelic has been dominating that event in recent years and Marlies Schild captured the previous Super-combined at Reiteralm early December. The slalom specialist lost too much time in her downhill race this time to fight again for victory, but her 3rd place helped her to reinforce her lead in the Overall standings before the next races at Cortina d'Ampezzo, where a downhill, a Super-G and a giant slalom are scheduled from Friday to Sunday.