Copper Mountain (United States) (AFP) – American star Mikaela Shiffrin maintained her unbeaten start to the slalom season on Sunday with a dominant victory at the alpine skiing World Cup meeting in Copper Mountain, Colorado. In front of a home crowd, the 30-year-old American cruised to victory with a combined time of 1min 48.75sec, finishing a comfortable 1.57sec ahead of Germany’s Lena Durr in second. Albanian teenager Lara Colturi finished in third place, 1.85sec behind Shiffrin.
Shiffrin’s win — the 104th World Cup circuit victory of her career and her 67th slalom win — followed similarly dominant slalom victories by the two-time Olympic gold medallist in Finland and Austria earlier this season. She tops the discipline standings and also heads the overall standings, 90 points clear of Colturi. Shiffrin’s form comes as she builds towards next year’s Winter Olympics in Cortina in Italy, where she is desperate to atone for her disastrous 2022 games in Beijing, where she came away empty-handed.
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Despite her latest slalom victory though, Shiffrin admitted she had found Sunday’s race — just a few kilometers from her home — a challenge. “This is super special,” Shiffrin said. “Today was stressful. I didn’t expect to have so many nerves but it’s special to race at home, and this crowd is incredible. I could hear them from the start…that energy helps, because this is a hard course. It’s long and it’s tiring.”
Shiffrin meanwhile admitted that the altitude of Copper Mountain — which is one of the highest race venues on the circuit with an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet — had posed an additional challenge. “I mean, I live here and I never get used to it,” she said afterwards. “Particularly travelling from overseas. You don’t even have a week to get used to it or anything.”
France’s Caitlin McFarlane posted the fastest time in the second run, just ahead of Shiffrin, to achieve her best career result with a 12th place finish, 3.44 seconds behind.
© 2024 AFP
