American Shiffrin captures her 99th career World Cup victory
1:40.22 was the winning time for Mikaela Shiffrin of the U.S. who won Saturday’s World Cup slalom race in Gurgl, Austria.
“I could hear all the women going down and their teams were cheering, and that always means they had a really good run. And it was getting darker,” said Shiffrin, adding she didn’t “think it’s happening today.”
Shiffrin initially extended her lead to more than seven-tenths of a second and only lost fractions of that over the last two sections.
“It feels really satisfying to have a really great run down this slope. What a wonderful day,” she said.
In the first run, Shiffrin wasn’t clean going into the steep of the Kirchenkar course but gained time on all competitors with a near-flawless section toward the finish.
“It’s a pretty strange surface, like cold and dry. It’s hard to be clean on the skis. So, I was feeling a little bit funky on some spots,” Shiffrin said after the opening run.
“But in the end, I kept pushing forward, just stayed on top of it and pushed to the finish. I find it to be really challenging on this condition to find the right setup to feel clean and to feel like you can unleash the skis.”
Swiss skier Wendy Holdener, who was second after the opening run, dropped to fourth, and Shiffrin’s teammate Paula Moltzan trailed by 1.10 seconds in sixth.
Laurence St-Germain, of Saint-Ferréol-les-Neiges, Que., finished 2.02 seconds back of Shiffrin to land in 11th place.
Olympic champion Petra Vlhova, Shiffrin’s biggest rival in slalom, hasn’t returned to racing yet after undergoing knee surgery last season.
Gurgl was a new venue on the women’s World Cup, after it staged a men’s race last season. The resort in the Austrian Alps is just a 15-kilometre drive from Soelden, where the traditional season opener took place four weeks ago.
The men race a slalom on the same hill on Sunday.
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Publish date : 2024-11-23 01:19:00
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