Industry News
Mikaela Shiffrin won the slalom on Saturday, denying her Slovakian rival Petra Vlhova a home victory in Jasna, Slovakia. Trailing 0.27-seconds after the first run, Shiffrin put in an exemplary second run to win by 0.34-seconds.
Shiffrin and Vlhova combined have won 31 of the 32 World Cup slaloms held since January 2017.
“I feel pretty amazing about it. It was a really good fight for me and that’s a pretty nice feeling to have right now.”
– Mikaela Shiffrin
The result took Shiffrin within one victory of a World Cup record. Only one skier, male or female, has won more races in a single discipline: Ingemar Stenmark won 46 times in giant slalom in the 1970s and 80s. Shiffrin now has 69 World Cup victories across all disciplines.
Then on Sunday, Shiffrin grabbed her 102nd FIS Ski World Cup podium, finishing third in the GS. Vlhova won the race by sixteen-hundredths of a second over New Zealand’s Alice Robinson. Shiffrin rounded out the podium in third, .37 second off Vlhova’s pace.
There was controversy though, as Shiffrin was unhappy with how the fixing of a broken gate was handled, and how long they kept her waiting in the starting gate.
“It took nearly a minute to hear what the course hold was for, so I was standing there trying to just stay focused, but I felt there was something else going on because we normally get info quicker than that especially for a gate-fix. And then it took another minute for them to say the course was clear. The next countdown for my start was a half-interval, so it took another minute before I was able to go. It just doesn’t take that long to fix a gate, but even more so, it doesn’t take that long for them to tell you that was what the course hold was for…and it felt like stalling. I had said it was eight minutes, which is obviously not true, but as an athlete standing in the start gate, it feels like an eternity even if it’s not. Life isn’t fair and ski racing is certainly not always fair, so it really was more frustration about the hold and communication being unprofessional, rather than unfair.”
– Mikaela Shiffrin
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