Mikaela Shiffrin on Tuesday won the last FIS Alpine Ski World Cup women’s slalom before the Beijing Olympics to take her 47th victory in the discipline and smash a record the US skier had shared with Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark.
The double Olympic gold medalist, who shed tears at the finish, has now won more races in a single discipline than any other skier, male or female, in World Cup history.
Stenmark won 46 men’s giant slaloms in a career stretching from 1973 to 1989.
Photo: AFP
Tuesday’s race was originally scheduled for Flachau, Austria, but was rearranged to a long, steep piste usually reserved for men’s races, due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in that resort.
“I’m just crying a lot lately,” said Shiffrin, who has had back problems and then missed two races last month after testing positive for COVID-19 before a rare non-finish in Slovenia on Sunday.
“It’s such a privilege to race on this slope, and all I wanted to do today was earn that, deserve it, because it’s iconic. I was geeking out this morning... I can’t believe that we can be here,” she said. “It’s just quite special to be sitting here now. It’s like it didn’t happen.”
The American now has 73 World Cup wins in total, 13 short of Stenmark’s all-time record.
Shiffrin, 26, had been only fifth after the opening leg in Schladming, Austria, but dominated the second run down the floodlit piste.
Slovakian Petra Vlhova, who had won five of the previous six slaloms and led after the first leg, had to settle for second with the consolation of securing the season title for the discipline.
While Shiffrin piled on the pressure with her powerful second run, two of the final four — Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener and Canada’s Ali Nullmeyer — skied out.
Vlhova, last to go, saw her 0.42 second advantage melt away as she finished 0.15 behind the American overall World Cup leader. Germany’s Lena Duerr took a distant third place.
The Beijing Games start on Feb. 4 and Shiffrin has plans to race all five individual events there.
The next women’s World Cup races are a downhill and Super-G in Zauchensee, Austria, at the weekend.
Nottingham Forest FC are to go into the Europa League play-off round after a 4-0 win over Ferencvaros TC on Thursday, while Celtic FC secured their place in the knockout phase with a victory over FC Utrecht. Aston Villa FC finished second in the league phase after recovering from two goals down to beat FC Red Bull Salzburg 3-2 with their spot in the last 16 already assured. Forest stood an outside chance of climbing into the top eight going into the final round of matches, but needed to beat Robbie Keane’s Ferencvaros and rely on other results going their way. Sean Dyche’s
HEATED RIVALRY: The pair had met 14 times previously, with Sabalenka winning eight of the encounters and entering the final as the favorite to take the title Elena Rybakina took revenge over world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka to win a nail-biting Australian Open final yesterday and clinch her second Grand Slam title. The big-serving Kazakh fifth seed held her nerve to pull through 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne in 2 hours, 18 minutes. It was payback after the Belarusian Sabalenka won the 2023 final between two of the hardest hitters in women’s tennis. The ice-cool Rybakina, 26, who was born in Moscow, adds her Melbourne triumph to her Wimbledon win in 2022. It was more disappointment in a major final for Sabalenka, who won the US Open
Denver superstar Nikola Jokic returned from a 16-game injury absence to post a 31-point, 12-rebound double-double on Friday and propel the Nuggets to a 122-109 NBA victory over the Los Angeles Clippers. Three-time NBA Most Valuable Player Jokic had not played since suffering a bone bruise in the left knee he hyperextended in a game against Miami on Dec. 29 last year. The Serbian big man did not miss a beat. He led all scorers, connecting on eight of 11 shots from the field, and also handed out five assists with three steals while playing just 24 minutes, 32 seconds as the
BATTERED AND BRUISED: Alcaraz suffered a cramp in the third set, but was allowed treatment despite Zverev’s protests, and continued on to win in five-and-a-half hours An ailing Carlos Alcaraz battled past Alexander Zverev yesterday in five epic sets to reach his first Australian Open final and move within a match of becoming the youngest man to complete a career Grand Slam. The world No. 1 outlasted the German third seed 6-4, 7-6 (7/5), 6-7 (3/7), 6-7 (4/7), 7-5 over a titanic 5 hours, 27 minutes in hot conditions to head to tomorrow’s title match. He only narrowly avoided crashing out after a huge fright at 4-4 in the third set when he pulled up in pain with what appeared to be cramp. He was allowed to have treatment
RSS