SÖLDEN, Austria (AP) – Mikaela Shiffrin excelled in the opening giant slalom of the World Cup season on Saturday, showing two nearly flawless ski runs on one of the toughest hills on the women’s circuit to win his 70th career victory.
The performance of the American Olympic champion was too much, even for Lara Gut-Behrami, the reigning GS world champion from Switzerland.
Shiffrin was .02 behind Gut-Behrami after the first run, but completed another clean run in the second to beat her Swiss rival by .14 in perfectly sunny conditions on the Rettenbach Glacier.
“It’s important to start the season strong so I’m very happy,†said Shiffrin. “It’s a pleasure to ski today, they made such an incredible preparation (of lessons), it was so incredible to ski this hill.
The duo finished well ahead of the rest of the field, with defending champion Petra Vlhova of Slovakia trailing 1.30 seconds in third.
Shiffrin became only the third skier in World Cup history to reach the 70-win mark, after Ingemar Stenmark and Lindsey Vonn achieved the feat before ending their careers with 86 and 82 wins, respectively. .
“I guess now it does,†Shiffrin said when asked if the number 70 meant anything special to her. “It’s a great success, I’m proud of it. Seventy is incredible, but the goal today was to ski well.
And Shiffrin did just that on Saturday.
She opened the race with a clean run, briefly shrugging after finishing, but her time easily held up when other pre-race favorites fell.
Only Gut-Behrami, who had an aggressive run in perfectly sunny conditions on the Rettenbach Glacier, led Shiffrin’s time by a few hundredths throughout his run.
Gut-Behrami got off to the quickest start and was ahead by 0.09 on the first pass, but lost a fraction of his lead over Shiffrin at each of the subsequent checkpoints.
“It was a really super clean race. I felt really good in my skiing, â€said Shiffrin after the first run. “Looking at Lara, she’s also very relevant and maybe a little more active, like that little extra something.”
The battle for victory took an intriguing turn in the second leg.
After Shiffrin put the pressure on Gut-Bahrami by posting the fastest second-run tun by far, the Swiss skier found herself trailing .10 at the first checkpoint, but gained time over entering Shiffrin. in the steep midsection, regaining the lead with a .24 advantage.
However, she failed to match Shiffrin in the lower section.
Shiffrin’s 13th GS victory came seven years after winning her first race in the discipline at the same venue, sharing the 2014 victory with Austria’s Anna Fenninger.
Several of Shiffrin’s main challengers have had a difficult start to the season.
In particular, Italian GS specialists Marta Bassino and Federica Brignone both skied.
Bassino, who won the race a year ago and dominated the discipline with four wins last season, lost control of her ski just outside halfway through her first descent, when she was already 0.57 behind the Shiffrin leader at the time.
Brignone was 1.52 behind after the first run in 15th before hitting a gate with his left arm in the second.
Other big names struggled as well, with French star Tessa Worley finishing 2.06 seconds in eighth and New Zealander Alice Robinson, who won the season opener in 2019, at 2.41 seconds. of the head in 11th.
Arrived so early in the winter season, the traditional start of the season in October is usually a race where many skiers fail to find their rhythm, seven months after the end of the previous season.
“Sometimes people don’t push that hard, they just try to use it for training, but you really have to attack this hill,†Shiffrin said.
Shiffrin led a strong performance for the US Ski Team, with four of its five starters scoring World Cup points, including a career-high ninth-place finish for Nina O’Brien. In addition, AJ Hurt finished 20th and Paula Moltzan finished 23rd.
Amid strict anti-coronavirus measures, the race drew 9,000 spectators.
A minute of silence before the race was devoted to Gian Franco Kasper, the long-time president of the FIS who died in July, just a few weeks after the election of Johan Eliasch to succeed him.
The Men’s World Cup starts on Sunday with a SG on the same slope.
___
More AP Skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/skiing and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
___
Eric Willemsen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eWilmedia
