The next generation of talent did their very best but, in the end, not even a pair of lifetime best performances could stop Mikaela Shiffrin (USA) from claiming her 99th Audi FIS World Cup win in Gurgl, Austria on Saturday.
The 18-year-old Lara Colturi (ALB) and Switzerland’s Camille Rast, 25, threw down the gauntlet in the second slalom of the season, but Shiffrin is far from ready to hand over her crown.
Instead, for the second time in a week Shiffrin went out first, grabbed the lead with a free-flowing fast opening effort and then calmly converted her position of strength into yet another elite-level victory.
Colturi took second, 0.55 seconds back with Rast in third – both skiers enjoying the sensation of stepping onto a World Cup podium for the very first time.
Wendy Holdener (SUI) is no stranger to how that feels but despite a brilliant first run that left her behind only Shiffrin, the Swiss star lost her rhythm second time out and faded to end fourth.
On a stunning day in the resort known as the ‘Diamond of the Alps’, the vast crowd had been hopeful of a first World Cup slalom victory on home snow for an Austrian female in more than a decade when in-form Katharina Liensberger (AUT) waltzed into third position in the morning. But the 2021 slalom world champion found the going a whole lot tougher in the afternoon and dropped to seventh.
Turning strong first runs into wins is something Shiffrin does better than any other skier in history. And the 29-year-old made it look easy. Although she insisted appearances can be deceptive.
“I was really nervous on the top. 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 and I was like ‘sh*t, I don’t think it’s happening today’,” Shiffrin said, before revealing how she overcame her doubts.
Spectacular is about as good a word as there is to describe Shiffrin’s endlessly remarkable achievements. The headline figures are growing by one each week currently, with this her 62nd World Cup slalom win. That is a record, as is fact that she now has 21 victories from 24 slalom starts in Austria. Next week she will go for her 100th World Cup title in her 274th World Cup event.
Teenager Colturi knows that, like every other ski racer, she can only marvel at such numbers. But in just her 20th World Cup slalom she is now on the board, with her first ever podium finish.
“I love skiing here,” Colturi said as her smile lit up the finish area. “I am just really, really happy.”
Her best ever morning effort left the Albanian fourth going into the second run and Colturi handled the pressure with aplomb, producing a calm, composed performance that suggests a first win might not be too far away.
Junior super-G world champion last year, Colturi revealed some hard competition in training had helped her turn youthful promise into World Cup silverware.
“I was feeling pretty good in training the last few days, I have been training with (Henrik) Kristoffersen (Norway’s double world champion) and some other boys,” Colturi said.
The wait has been a little longer for Rast but the 25-year-old has been edging closer and closer to her first taste of World Cup glory. Twice fourth in slalom races last season and fifth last week in Levi, Finland, the Swiss skier finally did it. Thanks in large part to a brilliantly smooth second run.
“It’s amazing. Everybody was asking when are you going on the podium? And I was like ‘I don’t know, I try every time’,” a laughing Rast, fifth after run one, said.
“It was a new slope for everybody and we didn’t really know how to ski to be fast and how it felt to be fast. I did a big mistake on the first run before the flat part and I lost a lot of time there. The second time was much better.
“Today it was really, really a nice day for me.”
Shiffrin knows just how special Rast and Colturi feel.
“It’s the beginning of your career and the future, there’s no limit and that’s such a wonderful feeling,” Shiffrin said, before admitting that she also knows all eyes will be on her non-stop for the next seven days.
Next Saturday the USA megastar will have the first of two chances (giant slalom on 30 November and slalom on 31 November) to reach the fabled figure of 100 World Cup wins in front of her home fans in Killington.
“It's not impossible, but so many things have to go right,” Shiffrin said. “I think from outside it looks it looks easy, or it looks like it's supposed to happen this way, but even today took so much energy to bring out my top skiing.
"So, it's not easy, and everybody's pushing and catching up. And so, I'm not taking that for granted.”
