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rsederquist@vaildaily.com
A day after celebrating her 31st birthday, Mikaela Shiffrin was having one of her best giant slalom runs in recent memory on Saturday morning in Åre, Sweden. The Edwards skier posted the fastest first two splits on the Störtloppsbacken slope and built more than a half-second advantage on leader Camille Rast by the third sector. But right before the finish line, Shiffrin skidded slightly off course and had to brake to make the next gate.
The mistake put the 108-time World Cup winner into 12th, 2.29 seconds off the lead.
“I was just not really expecting to get like a kind of a little bit of a jump on this last roller,” said Shiffrin, who came into the event chasing a historic sixth overall crystal globe.
The two athletes with the best chance to prevent Shiffrin from tying Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Proll as the only women to win six titles are Germany’s Emma Aicher — who wound up fourth — and Rast, who skied out early in the second run, ceding the GS title to Julia Scheib.
Scheib claimed her fifth win of the season on Saturday with a two-run time of 2 minutes, 22.41 seconds. Former Ski and Snowboard Club Vail skier Paula Moltzan finished second, 0.36 seconds back and Alice Robinson — who won the GS at the Copper Cup in November — rounded out the podium.
“I had a tough Olympics, so I’m happy to be back on the podium,” said Moltzan, who credited her fifth top-3 finish of the year to her scorching first run. “I think to be able to have a good race here you have to have the first run come together. And so, that I had a good first run and then held in on the second — it was a little loose, a little scrappy — I’m happy.”
A.J. Hurt finished ninth and Nina O’Brien was 15th to round out the American contingent. Moltzan also said she was happy for her friend, Scheib, who became the ninth Austrian — and first since Eva-Maria Brem in 2016 — to win the giant slalom globe.
“In Copper when she DNF’d in the GS, she was so down and out,” Moltzan said. “People were already thinking about the globe and I was like, ‘you know what, I’ve seen Marco Odermatt DNF twice and still win the globe, so I believe you can do it.’ So, I’m really proud of her.”
“It feels very special,” Scheib told FIS in the post-race broadcast interview. “Winning the giant slalom globe has been a goal of mine for many years and to achieve it today means a lot today.”
Scheib was ninth in the GS standings last year and came into this campaign with only one World Cup podium to her name. She claimed her first-career win in the season-opener in Solden, Austria. When asked if she expected to ski so well this season, the 27-year-old responded, “To be honest, no.”
“Because to be so consistent is not so easy because we had different conditions,” she continued. “And yeah, I don’t know what to say — this is amazing.”
Shiffrin moved up seven spots to fifth, collecting 45 points in the process. The tech specialist made a rare super-G appearance last week at Val di Fassa to fend off the overall pursuit from Aicher and Rast. Her 23rd-place finish there garnered eight points, which could prove critical, especially since Aicher skied out in the middle of her run. Shiffrin is currently 120 points clear of the German and 223 ahead of Rast.
Coming off two crashes in a downhill and a GS in 2024, Shiffrin’s progress in the giant slalom has been encouraging. The two-time giant slalom globe winner (2019, 2023) secured her first podium result in two years when she placed third at a race in Czechia in January. She said Saturday’s race was another step forward.
“My goal this run was to be really attacking, then I had more speed than I expected,” she said after her first trip down the 416-meter hill. “For the rest of the run, that was the best run in GS skiing I had in a race this year. I’m so happy with that.”
Shiffrin’s second run was an all-out attack from the gate, too. She gained nearly two-tenths of a second on each of the opening two sectors but then lost some time near the bottom. Her time of 1:10.48 was still enough to temporarily bump her into the leader’s chair.
On Sunday, Shiffrin will contest the event she won Olympic gold in last month: slalom. Earlier this year, she secured a ninth discipline globe in her specialty event. The World Cup season wraps up March 19-25 with a full slate of four events for both men and women: downhill, super-G, giant slalom and slalom.
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