Mikaela Shiffrin isn't just winning each slalom of the Winter Games season. She is commanding each race and securing victories by significant gaps as well.
An Evening Marked by Record-Extending Skiing
The US ski sensation earned a record-extending 105th World Cup victory after a number of her primary challengers failed to finish during the first run of a evening event on Tuesday.
Shiffrin increased her first-run lead and finished over one and a half seconds ahead of Swiss skier Camille Rast and 1.71 ahead of competitor from Germany Emma Aicher.
"Shiffrin has now won the first four slaloms of the season – and five consecutive including the final race of last season," noted analysts.
Commanding Leads of Success
All of her margins of victory this season have exceeded a full second – with three of them more than 1.5 seconds: 1.66 in Levi, Finland; 1.23 seconds in Gurgl, Austria; and 1.57 seconds in Copper Mountain, Colorado before her latest performance in the French Alps.
Challengers Encounter Difficulty
Competitors striving to match Shiffrin ran into difficulty.
- Lena Duerr, the German skier who was third after the first run, went off course early in her second trip down.
- Lara Colturi, the born in Italy skier who races for Albania, straddled a gate toward the end of her initial run – ending a streak of three consecutive slalom podiums.
- Wendy Holdener achieved a seventh-place finish despite a incident at the end of her first run where she encountered a rut, was flipped into the air, and landed on her back.
Defending World Cup slalom champion Zrinka Ljutic and Olympic silver medalist Katharina Liensberger, the following two competitors, went out midway down the course.
This marks the third consecutive slalom that Ljutic has not completed.
Final Standings
Katharina Truppe of Austria finished fourth and American skier Paula Moltzan moved up from ninth to fifth with the fastest second run of the race.
A Legacy of Achievements
This win represented Shiffrin's 68th World Cup slalom victory. Her Olympic accolades include gold in slalom at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the giant slalom gold four years later at the Pyeongchang Games. She didn’t medal at the 2022 Beijing Games.
The upcoming winter Olympics' women’s Alpine skiing events will be held in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – a venue where Shiffrin won four medals in her four events at the 2021 world championships.
