Swiss skier Camille Rast on Tuesday earned the second FIS Alpine Ski World Cup victory of her breakthrough season, leading teammate Wendy Holdener for a Swiss 1-2 finish at a night slalom in Flachau, Austria.
The result pushed Rast back to the top of the slalom and overall season standings.
With injured slalom stars Mikaela Shiffrin and Petra Vlhova missing, Rast had a frenetic final run to improve from eighth position and beat runner-up Holdener by 0.16 seconds.
Photo: Reuters
Rast became the first skier other than Shiffrin or Vlhova to win the annual floodlit race since Frida Hansdotter triumphed in 2017, a year before the Swede won Olympic slalom gold.
“I saw yesterday on Instagram that Mikaela and Petra won the last six races here. Then I’m really happy today to make a new name on the list,” Rast said.
Olympic giant slalom champion Sara Hector of Sweden trailed by 0.38 seconds in third place.
Photo: Reuters
Home crowd favorite Katharina Liensberger, who held a big lead after the opening leg, struggled in her second run down the Griessenkar course and the 2021 slalom world champion dropped to fourth.
Rast had not been on a World Cup podium before this season, but has racked up two wins and a third, two fourth and a fifth place in the current slalom campaign.
Her maiden victory came in Killington, Vermont, last month, when she also led a Swiss 1-2 ahead of Holdener.
Rast leads the overall standings by 26 points over Hector and the slalom season rankings 60 points clear of Holdener.
“I never expected this, I just enjoy it, but I go day by day from here,” Rast told Austrian TV.
Swiss all-rounder Michelle Gisin, a double-Olympic gold medalist in Alpine combined, was mobbed by her teammates after finishing 23rd.
Before the race, the 31-year-old, whose only World Cup victory was in a slalom in 2021, said it would be her last slalom as it’s “time to focus my energy on the remaining three disciplines.”
Gisin’s previous World Cup win came in a night race at Semmering four years ago, when her triumph ended a streak of 28 slaloms between February 2017 and December 2020 that were all won by either Shiffrin or Vlhova.
Additional reporting by AFP
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