Lindsey Vonn clinched her fifth consecutive World Cup downhill title on Saturday, although German rival and friend Maria Hoefl-Riesch won the race on the 2014 Sochi Olympics course.

For her second victory this season and first in downhill, Hoefl-Riesch clocked 1 minute, 49.17 seconds down the Rosa Khutor slope. Elisabeth Goergl of Austria finished second, 0.43 seconds behind, and Vonn was third, 0.59 back.

Vonn now holds an unassailable 231-point lead over Hoefl-Riesch in the downhill standings with two races remaining in the discipline this season and wins worth 100 points each.

“Downhill is my favourite event and it’s always nice to wrap up a title before the end of the season, before the last races,” Vonn said. “It puts a little less pressure on me.”

Hoefl-Riesch also had a win in the test event for the past Olympics.

“It’s really important,” the German said. “In Whistler, two years before the Olympics I won the super-combined and I (did well) in the downhill and I won two gold medals two years later. But it’s never a guarantee, it’s just good to know you can be fast on a special track where a big event takes place.”

Vonn has an even bigger lead in the overall standings, where she is 448 points ahead of Slovenia’s Tina Maze and 486 points in front of Hoefl-Riesch, who ended Vonn’s run of three consecutive overall titles last season.