The dominance of Mikaela Shiffrin goes beyond simple winning every slalom of the Winter Games season. She’s dominating each race and finishing with considerable leads as well.
An Evening Marked by Record-Extending Performance
The US ski sensation earned a record-extending 105th World Cup victory after a number of her primary challengers failed to finish during the opening run of a night race on Tuesday.
Shiffrin increased her first-run lead and finished over one and a half seconds ahead of Swiss skier Camille Rast and 1.71 seconds ahead of competitor from Germany Emma Aicher.
"The skier has triumphed in the first four slaloms of the season – and five straight including the final race of last season," noted analysts.
Commanding Margins of Success
All of her margins of victory this season have topped a full second – with three of them more than 1.5 seconds: a 1.66-second lead in Levi, Finland; 1.23 seconds in Gurgl, Austria; and 1.57 in Copper Mountain, Colorado before her latest performance in the French Alps.
Rivals Face Difficulty
Rivals scrambling to catch Shiffrin ran into difficulty.
- Lena Duerr, the German skier who was third after the first run, went off course early in her second run.
- Lara Colturi, the Italian-born skier who races for Albania, missed a gate toward the end of her opening run – halting a streak of three consecutive slalom podiums.
- Wendy Holdener achieved a seventh-place finish even with a incident at the end of her first run where she encountered a rut, was flipped into the air, and landed on her back.
Defending World Cup slalom champion Zrinka Ljutic and Olympic silver medalist Katharina Liensberger, the next two starters, were disqualified midway down the course.
This marks the third consecutive slalom that Ljutic has failed to finish.
Race Results
Katharina Truppe of Austria placed fourth and American skier Paula Moltzan climbed from ninth to fifth with the fastest second run of the race.
A Legacy of Accomplishments
This win represented Shiffrin's sixty-eighth World Cup slalom victory. Her Olympic accolades include the slalom gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and gold in giant slalom four years later at the Pyeongchang Games. She did not reach the podium at the 2022 Beijing Games.
The upcoming winter Olympics' women’s Alpine skiing events will be held in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – a venue where Shiffrin secured four medals in her four events at the 2021 world championships.
