In the 1973/74 season , Zechmeister was the outstanding slalom runner. She won the first four races and was the first German to win the Slalom World Cup. In the eighth World Cup season it was also the first ever victory for a German in a discipline World Cup. Her maiden victory in the slalom on December 7, 1973 in Val-d'Isère made her the youngest ever winner of a World Cup race at the age of 16 years and 3 days (a record that still exists; as of March 9, 2016). In the giant slalom on January 14, 1971, she achieved her only podium in this discipline with third place in Grindelwald , and she finished fourth in the overall World Cup. After her World Cup victories, Zechmeister traveled to the 1974 World Cup in St. Moritz as the big favorite , but was eliminated in the slalom after the best interim time in the first round. In the giant slalom she finished 15th.
In the winter of 1974/75 Zechmeister won the slalom of the gold key race in Schruns and finished third in the Slalom World Cup with four more podium places. On January 17, 1976, she celebrated her last World Cup victory in the Berchtesgaden slalom. It remained her only podium in the 1975/76 season and she fell back to seventh place in the Slalom World Cup. At the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck , which also counted as a world championship, she finished seventh in slalom.
In the 1976/77 season it was not enough for Zechmeister to make another podium in the World Cup. Her best result was fourth in the Maribor slalom, and tenth in the Slalom World Cup. Her greatest success of the season was when she won the German championship in 1977 in giant slalom. She also won the parallel slalom at the finals in the Sierra Nevada (ahead of Marie-Theres Nadig and Annemarie Moser-Pröll ). At the end of next winter, Zechmeister was on the podium for the last time with second place in the parallel slalom in Arosa . Like the race in 1977, this was only part of the Nations Cup and not the slalom classification. In the other races she was no longer in the top five in the 1977/78 season and in the Slalom World Cup for the first time in five years she was not in the top 10. At the 1978 World Cup in Garmisch-Partenkirchen , she was ninth in the slalom and tenth in the giant slalom. In the 1978/79 season she achieved three sixth places and another top 10 result again tenth place in the Slalom World Cup. In her last World Cup season 1979/80 she did not come in any of the top ten races.
↑ Results of the 1974 World Championship Slalom. Www.alpineskiing-worldchampionships.com, accessed on March 16, 2010 (English, web link no longer available)
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