AVON, Colo. -- On the day that World Cup skiers saluted the birthday of retired icon Hermann Maier, a skier from the new generation made his mark at the Birds of Prey course.

Swiss skier Carlo Janka captured a second consecutive World Cup title Saturday, as the Swiss went 1-2 in the World Cup men's downhill.

It was the second day in a row that the Swiss took the top two podiums. In the downhill, it was Didier Cuche who was second. In Friday's combination event -- a downhill plus a slalom, it was Switzerland's Didier Defago who earned silver.

Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal, the reigning overall champion on the World Cup circuit, was third, another solid performance on the course where he had a dangerous crash three years ago. American Bode Miller put on an exciting show for his domestic fans, taking an early lead before getting bumped to fourth.

Canadians Manuel Osborne-Paradis, a winner in last week's Super-G race at Lake Louise, and Erik Guay were 28th and 29th. A third Canadian starter, Robbie Dixon went off course and didn't finish.

Janka completed the course in 1 minute, 43.49 seconds with Cuche 0.02 seconds back. On a scale of one to 10, Janka rated the downhill win "a 10" compared with the kombi.

"I was thinking more about speeds today," said Janka. He said he'd taken it easy early this season and at Lake Louise last week to be resady for this downhill. "What can I say, it is a great weekend. I was probably more nervous about what the speed would be like here this morning. But I was very calm at the start, the exact same way I felt before. I made a few small mistakes but I still performed well enough to win."

He said of the Birds of Prey course, which he rates 1-2 with Kitxbuehel, Austria for difuculty, grew icier as more skiers went down. Nine racers did not finish, seven of them from the 30th start position onward. Janka started 11th.

Miller came in 0.45 seconds off the pace - by far his best showing of the season. The two-time overall champion raced in classic Miller fashion, twice nearly skiing out, but he touched the snow with a glove at one point to stay upright. He arrived to a cacophony of bells and cheers from about 8,000 fans in the finish area and a loudspeaker system blaring an oldies hit "Born to be Wild" in deference to Miller's unconventional past.

Both Osborne-Paradis and Guay stayed in the athletes' pen at the finish zone to encourage Dixon and Guay talked to Dixon on top of the mountain to give him the last minute lowdown.

"It was still my best result here," said Osborne-Paradis. "My first couple of years here, I'd never even seen the finish area from the jump on down," he said, referring to falls. "I just need to work on getting my confidence level up. I was two seconds out with two big mistakes."

He said Dixon, who started later, was skiing from light into dark. "It's racing. When you're skiing to win, you're going to make big mistakes. But he's shown what he can do here and he'll be fine," Osborne-Paradis said, noting that Dixon had gone from 56th-best in training, to 13th second. Dixon will ski in Sunday's giant slalom.

Cuche, 35, belongs to the generation of Maier, who tearfully retired at the start of this season. Maier turns 39 on Monday. The veteran Cuche won a silver medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. He only wishes he had the youthful skills of Janka to try it all again.

"I'm sure he don't really need to learn something from me. He has such an instinct, and has that in the blood," Cuche told a post-race news conference. "I just told him right after the finish: 'I'd like to go back 10 years having the same God's gift.'"

The win stretched Janka's lead in this year's over all World Cup standing, with 360 points to 319 for Cuche. Together, they are more than 100 ponts clear of a pair of Austrians, Benjamic Raich at 201 and Michael Walchhofer at 155. With Defago in fifth, Swiss skiers hold down three of the top five spots in the World Cup rankings and a changing of the guard is taking place.

Janka, 23, is part of a new wave coming into skiing. He earned a gold medal in giant slalom and bronze in downhill at the World Championships earlier this year in Val d'Isere, France. He will go into the Vancouver 2010 Olympics as one of the medal favourites.

It's fitting the Games are in Canada, because the country played a role in his development and breakthrough. In 2006 at the Junior World Championships at Mont Sainte-Anne, Que., he gained a bronze in giant slalom. Then, on Nov. 28, 2008, he staged one of the great late finishes in World Cup history. Starting from 65th spot, he charged through to place second in a race at Lake Louise.

Two weeks later, Janka won his first World Cup in a giant slalom race at Val d'Isere.

For Miller, it was almost a successful return to the days when he was the World Cup's star attaction.

"When the conditions are fairly even, like they are today, there's no question that I have the ability to win races," said Miller.

"But little things like mistakes have always been an issue for me. If I had a clean run today, I think I would have been on top of the podium."