Sestriere (Italy) (AFP) – Federica Brignone made it a giant slalom double at Sestriere after storming to her second straight World Cup victory on home snow after Mikaela Shiffrin failed to even qualify for Saturday’s second run. Giant slalom world champion Brignone surged to a combined time of two minutes and 8.81 seconds, 0.77 seconds ahead of Lara Gut-Behrami after another top performance in northern Italy. The 34-year-old now has 34 World Cup wins and is 190 points ahead of reigning overall and discipline champion Gut-Behrami in the general classification.
Brignone is having perhaps the best season of her career with eight wins including her gold at Saalbach, Austria, earlier this month. “It was incredible today, I could feel the support of the crowd right from the first gate until the finish line,” said Brignone to Italian broadcaster RAI. “It was special, I’ve got all my friends here and loads of people who’ve come here to see me so I was really keen to perform well.”
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Brignone added that Italy’s winter sports federation (FISI) had asked her to be the country’s flag-bearer for next year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics, and that she was keen to do so. “We’ll talk it over again,” said Brignone. “They asked me and I did say yes, but we’ll return to that at the end of the season. For now, I’d prefer to talk about these races and after that let’s see.”
Alice Robinson conceded her lead from the first run for the second day in a row and finished third, 0.79sec off the pace, her time knocking brave Sofia Goggia off the podium at the last. Robinson’s third place means she has a 40-point advantage over Brignone in the giant slalom standings.
– Goggia impresses, Shiffrin flops – Italian star Goggia had finished 17th in the morning’s opening run but shot down the piste to record the second fastest time of the second run, behind Brignone, and eventually claim fourth as the later skiers had to deal with increasingly poor visibility. “On the one hand it’s fantastic but you’re also disappointed when you finish fourth,” said Goggia. “The gap between me and the fastest times was too much, I lost a lot of time at the end of the first run.”
“But I’m very happy with the second run because I felt really good on my skis, I asked for a bit more grip because they were holding me back a bit…I just looked at the next gate and tried to bounce in there like a table tennis ball.”
Shiffrin will have to wait for her 100th World Cup win, after finishing 33rd in the first run and not qualifying for the afternoon’s decisive session. American star Shiffrin missed out after another disappointing run which left her trailing early leader Robinson by 2.5 seconds. The 29-year-old admitted after two difficult runs on Friday that her goal for the rest of the season is simply to collect points rather than go for wins.
She was tentative again on Saturday morning as she continues her comeback from an abdominal puncture wound suffered at Killington, Vermont, in November that required surgery. Shiffrin will have another chance to make her mark in Sestriere on Sunday when the resort hosts a slalom, her specialist event.
© 2024 AFP
