KRANJSKA GORA, Slovenia (AP) – Swiss skier Wendy Holdener set the fastest time in the opening round of a Women’s World Cup slalom on Sunday to beat stars Petra Vlhova and Mikaela Shiffrin.
Competing in her 100th career slalom, Holdener was eight hundredths of a second faster than defending champion Vlhova on a course mapped out by Slovak coach Mauro Pini.
Vlhova leads the discipline after winning four of the five previous slaloms this season.
Shiffrin, the only other slalom winner this season, was 0.25 seconds behind in the third. The American was over half a second behind Holdener in the second split, but regained some time with a strong final section.
The rest of the field, led by fourth-placed Lena Dürr of Germany, was more than half a second ahead. World slalom champion Katharina Liensberger from Austria finished 0.85 behind.
Holdener racked up 28 podiums in the slalom without winning a race. No other skier in World Cup history, whether women’s or men’s, has achieved more top-three results in a single discipline without a win.
Her Swiss teammate Michelle Gisin skied early in her race when she straddled the third gate.
Last season, Gisin became the first Swiss skier to win a women’s slalom in almost 19 years. Gisin and Liensberger are the only skiers other than Shiffrin and Vlhova to have won a slalom since January 2017.
Sunday’s race marked the penultimate women’s slalom before the Beijing Olympics. No spectators were allowed at the event, which had been relocated from another Slovenian station, Maribor, due to a lack of snow.
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