Mikaela Shiffrin extended her career record with her 90th victory in the women’s World Cup slalom, building on her early benefit.
The home crowd was delighted when the two-time Olympic champion from the United States beat her competitor Petra Vlhova of Slovakia by 0.33 seconds and posted the quickest time in both runs.
Shiffrin, who is from Colorado but can practically regard Killington as a home town race because she developed her abilities nearby at the Burke Mountain Academy as a youngster, remarked, “It’s amazing to do this, especially here, with the home crowd.” “It’s just such a good vibe and there’s a little extra intensity because we want this to be good for you guys to watch. I hope it was a good show.”
In the World Cup, Shiffrin earned 90 wins from 254 starts since making her circuit debut two days before turning 16 in 2011.
She took first place in a slalom in Sweden in December 2012, and in March of last year, she surpassed the record of Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark, who has 86 World Cup wins overall.
When only the American remained in the start gate, Vlhova, the Olympic champion, led the race by almost a second on Sunday, putting Shiffrin to the test.
At the first split, Shiffrin lost half of her lead of 0.28 seconds from her previous run, but she steadily closed her lead on Vlhova.
Two weeks prior, in Finland, Vlhova had won the opening slalom of the season and was leading Shiffrin handily in the second race the following day when he straddled a gate and let the American to win.
At the yearly World Cup weekend on the East Coast, Shiffrin has won six of the seven slaloms. The only time her run was stopped was the previous year, when she led after the first run but came in sixth as Wendy Holdener and Anna Swenn Larsson split the win.
This time, Holdener placed third, 1.37 seconds behind Shiffrin. Germany’s Lena Duerr fell from second to fourth.
Shiffrin had earlier set herself up for victory by beating Duerr by 0.19 seconds with an aggressive first run.
After the first run, she remarked, “I feel like I’m not playing with it as much as I want to, but it’s really good, solid technique, it’s really solid power.”
“There’s somehow another percentage that I’m trying to push and trying to get back, but I think that was a really, really good first run.”
Paula Moltzan, Shiffrin’s teammate, came in eighth, more than two seconds behind the leader, while Canadian slalom world champion Laurence St-Germain ended in 14th.
Lara Gut-Behrami does not compete in the slalom discipline; she won the GS on the same course on Saturday. Shiffrin finished third in that event.
The American, who is going for a record-tying sixth overall crown this season, increased her lead in the World Cup rankings.
The next events of the women’s World Cup will take place in two brand-new giant slaloms at Tremblant, Quebec.
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