Camille Rast on Saturday won slalom gold in a Swiss one-two with Wendy Holdener as American Mikaela Shiffrin missed out on a record 16th career medal at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships.
Austria’s Katharina Liensberger took the bronze on home snow in the last women’s race of the 13-day championships in Saalbach.
Shiffrin had been third after the first run, but dropped back to finish fifth overall behind US teammate Paula Moltzan in fourth.
Photo: AFP
“Both runs were really different and really challenging and I just tried to have fun,” said Rast, who was fastest from Liensberger after the first leg with Holdener fourth, after winning by 0.46 seconds.
Rast became the first Swiss winner of the slalom since the great Vreni Schneider in 1991 at the same Austrian resort.
“Mentally I was ready for this day. I just wanted to enjoy the whole day. It’s mega cool to be on the podium with Wendy,” said the new champion, whose father, motorbike racer Philippe Rast, had successes in international enduro races.
Holdener was fastest of all down the second run, with Moltzan next on the timesheets, to move into the medal positions.
Shiffrin, who took a record-equaling 15th medal when she and downhill champion Breezy Johnson won the new women’s team combined event on Tuesday last week, was only the 12th quickest in the deciding run.
Saturday was the first time the world’s most successful skier had failed to medal in slalom in seven championships. She won four golds in a row from 2013 to 2019, silver in 2023 and bronze in 2021.
Despite the miss, she said her race had been a “really good step forward” in her return to the piste from a puncture wound in her left abdomen suffered in a giant slalom crash in Killington, Vermont.
“I think there are some obvious challenges that I face to keep improving in my skiing and maybe to get to the point where I can be fighting for podiums for the end of the season,” she told Eurosport.
“Eight weeks ago I had surgery and six weeks ago I was still in bed with a drainage tube,” she said. “It’s a funny place to be, to be recovering and returning to ski racing ... in the end I’m really grateful to be here.”
Additional reporting by AP
TO THE TOP: After securing the international title on Saturday, Team Taiwan were to face Las Vegas to potentially win their 18th Little League World Series championship A team from Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School won the Little League Baseball World Series’ international title on Saturday by defeating Aruba 1-0 in the annual baseball tournament held in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The Taiwan team, competing under the name Chinese Taipei, were after press time last night to face a team from Las Vegas, Nevada, which beat a team from Fairfield, Connecticut, in the US championship 8-2. Taiwan are seeking to win their first Little League Baseball World Series title since 1996. “Really haven’t taken a moment to data dump right now on Taiwan,” Nevada manager T.J. Fescher said. “They’re a
Marc Marquez continued his winning streak as he cruised to victory in the Hungarian GP sprint by two seconds on Saturday night to pad his championship lead. It was a seventh straight Sprint victory for the Spaniard, who has also won the last six longer Sunday grand prix races on his factory Ducati. Fabio Di Giannantonio, an Italian with the VR46 Ducati satellite team was a distant second at Balaton Park, followed by his team-mate and compatriot Franco Morbidelli third. Marquez, a six-time world champion, started the race from pole position. “I felt someone really close on the first corner, from there I
Former European champions Celtic exited the UEFA Champions League in the qualifiers after a 3-2 penalty shoot-out defeat at Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty on Tuesday, following two goalless legs in the playoff tie. Kairat are to compete in the competition proper for the first time, while Norway’s Bodo/Glimt and Cyprus’s Pafos also secured debut appearances after coming through the playoffs. Celtic’s night ended in disappointment as they missed three penalties in the shoot-out, Daizen Maeda failing with the decisive spot-kick. The slugfest of a match went into extra-time with neither side finding the net and few overall chances, echoing the first
Russian Diana Shnaider continued her impressive winning streak in tour-level finals at the Monterrey Open on Saturday, beating compatriot Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 in the WTA 500 event’s final. Shnaider had little trouble in the opening set but struggled in a topsy-turvy second, as Alexandrova clinched the set’s fifth and decisive break at 5-4 to force a decider. Third-seed Shnaider carved out an advantage early on in the third set when she broke Alexandrova in the first game and held serve to go 2-0 up, an advantage she would not relinquish. World No. 12 Shnaider is now unbeaten in her last five
RSS