Finally, the day is here: the first Slalom World Cup of the season. After some recent snowfall, Levi delivered a hard, compact run on its Levi Black slope—and Mikaela Shiffrin wasted no time reminding the world why she owns this hill, claiming her 102nd career victory and completing her reindeer collection to match Santa.
Here’s a recap of the race action at Levi today. Slalom races are conducted in two runs with the combined time counting. Only the top 30 skiers qualify for run 2.
Run 1
Anna Swenn Larsson opened the race with a clean but conservative run, clocking a time of 58.18 seconds and laying down the first benchmark of the day. At 32, she and Germany’s Lena Dürr—who followed in bib 2—were the two oldest starters in the field today. Dürr immediately tightened the pace with a crisp, composed run in 57.57 seconds, sliding into an early lead.
Then came Shiffrin. The American superstar attacked from the first gate, taking 0.34 seconds out of Dürr on the flat top section alone. She continued to pour on speed into the mid-section, building her advantage to nearly a full second, and by the finish, she had stunned the field, crossing almost 1.5 seconds ahead of Dürr. Her skiing was dynamic, confident, and visibly on another level.
World Champion Camille Rast showed fluidity but lacked the bite needed to match Shiffrin. Nursing lingering hip issues, she bled time everywhere, ultimately finishing 2.43 seconds back. Austria’s Katharina Liensberger, also searching for her old rhythm, lost a second on the pitch and another on the bottom, ending with 58.24—competitive, but nowhere near the American.
Bib 6 brought in the reigning Crystal Globe winner, Zrinka Ljutić, sporting the red bib and looking sharp. A strong top section carried her to the finish just behind Dürr, sliding into third. Wendy Holdener in bib 7 put down a characteristic, dependable run to sit just behind Ljutić.
With the top seven down, it looked like the podium picture might already be locked—but Levi had other ideas. With 77 racers still to go, the first run was far from settled.
Paula Moltzan in bib 11 charged out of the start with the second-fastest top split but couldn’t hold it together on the steep pitches below, where a couple of costly mistakes pushed her out of the top mix, finishing in what was ultimately 19th place.
Then came the run of the morning: Lara Colturi, bib 12, and turning 19 years old today. She skied with zero hesitation, threading the line aggressively and cleanly. Colturi stunned the crowd by slotting in between Shiffrin and Dürr, finishing 1.08 seconds behind Shiffrin and 0.41 seconds ahead of Dürr—a sensational birthday run.
And the surprises kept coming. Norway’s Mina Fürst Holtmann in bib 15 pushed her way into the top five, while Emma Aicher in bib 16 matched Wendy Holdener’s time exactly, tying with the Swiss skier, while Neja Dvornik in bib 19 wedged herself right between them. Suddenly, bib numbers in the teens were back in contention for a podium spot.
But there were still standout performances deeper in the racing field, too. Japan’s Asa Ando in bib 35 stormed into 16th place, France’s Caitlin McFarlane in bib 44 landed in 17th, and Norway’s Bianca Bakke Westhoff in bib 46 charged into 15th, proving that higher bibs could still land in the teens. Perhaps the most remarkable came from Austria’s Lisa Hoerhager in bib 36, who broke into the top 10, the best result of her career.
The later starters for the U.S. had mixed fortunes. AJ Hurt in bib 25 was on a heater—just milliseconds off Shiffrin’s top split—before disaster struck on the entry to the pitch. Her inside ski slipped to the wrong side of the gate, resulting in an automatic disqualification. Her ski released, but she impressively stayed upright—a brilliant effort cut short by a tiny but run-ending mistake. Nina O’Brien (bib 40) caught an edge midway through and was thrown nearly backwards into the course, losing her ski and recording a DNF. Liv Moritz, making just the second World Cup start of her career, skied cleanly but cautiously into 54th.
Run 2
Run 2 is conducted in reverse order, with the 30th-ranked skier from run 1 going first, and the first-ranked, aka Mikaela Shiffrin, going last.
First out of the gate was Dzenifera Germane from Latvia, who set a pace of 53.70 seconds for the Run 2 and achieved a combined time of 1:52.86 minutes. It was a very fast pace that many failed to beat; however, Paula Moltzan showed that she is the Queen of run 2 and squeezed out more than half a second on German. With her 53.12-second pace for run 2, Moltzan catapulted herself into the lead with a combined time of 1:51.66 minutes.
- Related: Mikaela Shiffrin Shares Honest Recount of Her Struggles with PTSD Following Killington, VT, Crash
How good Moltzan’s second run was crystallized as skier after skier failed to unseat the American from the leader’s seat in the finish area. It took 12 more skiers to bump Moltzan from the leader’s position, as skier after skier failed to beat her combined time.
But Germany’s Emma Aicher, one of the young guns who we had down as one of the wildcards for today, snatched the lead by 0.15 seconds. With six skiers still to go, the field was still wide open, but Aicher remained in the lead as Neja Dvornik, Mina Holtman, Zrinka Ljutic, and even teammate Lena Dürr failed to best the young German all-rounder. With only two skiers left to go it meant that the first Slalom podium of her young career was in the bag—the only question was which podium spot would it be.
Lara Colturi crowned her birthday with a smashing second run—just a little slower than Moltzan’s run 2–catapulting herself into the lead with a combined time of 1:50.08, almost a second ahead of Aicher.
This left only Shiffrin, who had more than a second lead on Colturi from run 1. Could she hold onto that lead? Well, yes, she did. Not only that, she managed even to squeeze out another half a second, claiming victory by 1.66 seconds with a combined time of 1:48.92–proving once again that she truly is in a league of her own.
The races at Levi continue tomorrow with a men’s Slalom.
