The women's World Cup was due to feature a downhill race today in Altenmarkt-Zauchensee, Austria, but due to poor weather conditions and heavy snowfall, it has been abandoned.

A decision was also made to cancel the men's downhill race in Wengen, Switzerland, scheduled for today.

The women's downhill event has been moved to tomorrow with a mandatory training run scheduled before hand while the alpine combined event, originally pencilled in for tomorrow, has been cancelled and organisers are now unsure whether that will be re-arranged for another venue or removed from the programme.

Lindsey Vonn is set to return to World Cup action in Altenmarkt-Zauchensee.

The Vancouver 2010 downhill Olympic champion from the United States crashed in training back in November and underwent successful surgery to repair a fractured humerus bone in her right arm, forcing her out of action.

Vonn is the defending champion in both of the downhill and combined events at the resort.

Too much snowfall on the course forced the cancellation of Thursday and Friday's downhill training run.

As a result, organisers decided to push ahead with the plan for a downhill race today which has also fallen victim to the weather.

In Wengen, nearly half of a metre of snow covered the course overnight, there was no chance for organisers to clear the track with further snow forecast throughout the day.

As a result, the men's downhill race will not be rescheduled for this weekend in Wengen and organisers will look to place it into another World Cup meeting.

The men will stay with their original programme tomorrow with a slalom scheduled.

Switzerland’s Niels Hintermann claimed a surprise Alpine combined victory on home snow yesterday, but it was not enough to deny France’s Alexis Pinturault the discipline’s crystal globe.

Pinturault was the frontrunner going into the event after winning the opener in Santa Caterina last month and the Frenchman has now sealed back-to-back Alpine combined World Cup crystal globes.