Grugger, Suter set the pace in dowhhill ski training

Austria's Hans Grugger and Switzerland's Fabienne Suter set the early pace in the men's and women's downhill training on Tuesday ahead of the World Cup finale.

American ski queen Lindsey Vonn and Switzerland's Didier Cuche will be the ones to beat in Wednesday's downhill races, but Grugger and Suter were the fastest down the Kandahar course after the morning's training run.

The World Cup finale starts on Wednesday and finishes on Sunday with the team event.

Grugger set the pace of 1min 59.78sec with Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal, who won super-G gold, downhill silver and giant slalom bronze at the Vancouver Olympic Games, fifth fastest at 0.49sec with Cuche sixth at 0.73sec.

Cuche has already captured the World Cup downhill title, but left Vancouver without an Olympic medal and is in contention for the overall World Cup title here.

In the women's downhill training, Suter set the pace of 1min 38.03sec, but Olympic downhill and combined silver medallist Julia Mancuso was just behind her at 0.78sec.

Vonn, who clinched her third straight World Cup downhill title with victory in Crans Montana last weekend, is at 0.89sec in fourth.

Home favourite Maria Reisch was joint twelfth fastest at 1.75sec back.

But in the overall standings, Vonn holds a commanding 245-point lead over Riesch and the contest is effectively a two-horse race with the German 324 points clear of third-placed Anja Paerson of Sweden.

With 100 points awarded for each of the four races, Reisch will need to pull off something special to over-take the United States' starlet here in the race for the overall title.

The men's overall title is wide open with Austria's Benjamin Raich holding only a narrow lead.

Raich, who failed to win a medal at the Winter Olympics, stands 46 points ahead of Switzerland's Carlo Janka in second place.

Janka, who took the men's giant slalom Winter Games gold medal last month, is 127 points ahead of fellow countryman Cuche.

The five-day race programme sees both the women and men's downhill on Wednesday, followed by the women's giant slalom and men's Super-G on Thursday, the women's Super-G and men's giant slalom on Friday.

Both slalom events take place on Saturday before the team event on Sunday.