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US ski star Shiffrin dominates opening run in 1st World Cup slalom of Olympic season
LEVI, Finland (AP) — Mikaela Shiffrin opened the Olympic slalom season in dominating style Saturday by taking a big lead in the first run of a World Cup race in Finnish Lapland.
The American star posted the fastest split times in three of the four sections on the Levi Black course and finished 1.08 seconds ahead of second-placed Lara Colturi.
Colturi, an Italian-born prodigy competing for Albania, won 0.15 on Shiffrin’s time in the final section. Colturi turned 19 on Saturday.
Germany’s Lena Duerr stood third and slalom World Cup champion Zrinka Ljutic of Croatia was fourth. Only seven racers had less than two seconds to make up in the second leg later Saturday.
Shiffrin’s teammate Paula Moltzan, who finished runner-up in the season-opening giant slalom in Austria three weeks ago, was 2.46 off the lead.
Shiffrin especially excelled in the steep middle section, where she gained a few tenths on all competitors at each split.
“This was the best run I could do, that was kind of perfect,” said Shiffrin, calling it “a wonderful feeling” to replicate some of her best skiing from training.
“The whole summer prep I was focusing really a lot on giant slalom, so I didn’t get so many slalom days,” said the American, who placed fourth in the GS in October.
“But then when I did train slalom, it was really important to be maximum quality, maximum intensity every run.”
Recovered from a frightening crash in a GS a year ago, Shiffrin announced before the season she planned to reduce her schedule to slalom and GS, and maybe super-G, heading into the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in February.
Shiffrin won Olympic gold in slalom in 2014 and in GS in four years later.
Shiffrin got eight of her record 101 World Cup wins in the traditional season-opening slalom in Lapland, where the winner is given a reindeer as a prize.
No skier other than Shiffrin or Petra Vlhova of Slovakia has won the race in 13 editions since then overall champion Tina Maze triumphed in 2014.
Vlhova, who is the Olympic slalom champion, is still recovering from the lingering knee injury she sustained in January 2024.
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing
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