Saalbach (Austria) (AFP) – Italy’s Federica Brignone laid down the two fastest runs to win gold in the women’s giant slalom at the World Ski Championships in Saalbach on Thursday, as American Mikaela Shiffrin opted out of defending her title. Brignone clocked a winning aggregate time of 2min 22.71sec, finishing a massive 0.90sec ahead of Alice Robinson, who became the first New Zealander to win a world ski medal. American Paula Moltzan claimed bronze, 2.62sec off Brignone’s electric pace, but just one-hundredth of a second ahead of Norway’s Thea Louise Stjernesund, left weeping at her fourth place.
“It’s one of the best days of my life!” said Brignone, who wears a helmet decorated with a tiger’s head that is shown in full when she dips her head as she prepares to exit the start hut. “It will take time to understand it, I have so many emotions swirling around, maybe tonight I will realise what I have achieved. It was my dream since always. The GS for me I have this love and hate for because for some reason it’s the one where I’m more stressed, sometimes I can’t handle the pressure and I feel so bad in the start and then sometimes I do it. But today was really nice and when I can do it, it’s just amazing.”
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Brignone, already winner of super-G silver in Saalbach, had skied a near-faultless first run to put herself in pole going into the second run. The 34-year-old Italian, a GS silver medallist at the last worlds in Courchevel/Meribel in 2023 and also in 2011, as well as the 2022 Beijing Olympics, overcame the nervy wait in the start hut and smashed her rivals. Brignone’s victory saw her become Italy’s first women’s GS world champion since Deborah Compagnoni won back-to-back titles in 1996/97. She also becomes the oldest women’s world GS champion in history at 34 years and seven months, beating Germany’s Ossi Reichert, who at 30 won at the 1956 Cortina Olympics which doubled as a world champs.
Canada’s Britt Richardson set the early pace in the second leg before Italy-born Albanian Lara Colturi, 18, took the lead in 2:26.21 after finishing ninth fastest in the opening leg. Then came the top eight racers, but Croatia’s Zrinka Ljutic and German Lena Duerr failed to better Colturi.
Norway’s Stjernesund then moved into provisional top spot to heap the pressure on the five remaining racers. Sweden’s Sara Hector, the reigning Olympic GS champion who has yet to win an individual world championship medal in 14 attempts, continued that form as she was 0.25sec off the Norwegian’s pace. In the absence of Shiffrin, Switzerland’s Lara Gut-Behrami was the only other world championship GS gold medallist in the field, having won in Cortina D’Ampezzo in 2021. She came down fourth fastest in the first leg, but could not improve on that, eventually finishing fifth behind Stjernesund.
The top three then took control: first Moltzan, followed in quick turn by Robinson, the Kiwi emulating Brignone’s consistency by posting the second fastest time on each descent. “Skiing down I did not think it was a good run,” said Robinson. “It was one of those runs that feels bad but is really fast! As soon as I got past the third gate I thought I must charge and I had to go for it. Federica was amazing.”
That left just Brignone to come, with a palpable sense of expectation among the 15,000-strong crowd packed around the finish area. And the Italian did not disappoint, absolutely pushing to the limit to scorch through the line for victory. Her win was not at all lessened by the absence of Shiffrin, who had announced her withdrawal from the GS on Monday, citing symptoms like post-traumatic stress disorder related to an abdominal puncture wound she sustained in a nasty crash early in the season. It left her, she said, with a mental block on racing the giant slalom. Shiffrin did, however, compete in the slalom section of Tuesday’s team combined, winning a record-equalling 15th world medal as she and Breezy Johnson took gold.
© 2024 AFP
