Shiffrin bounces back with Aspen slalom win

Swiss Lara Gut has captured her 13th career Alpine Skiing Women’s World Cup victory in a giant slalom race in Aspen, Colorado after a late fall by American Mikaela Shiffrin.

The men’s World Cup slalom racers also will use single gates at a slalom race in Val d’Isere, France, in mid-December.

“Three great races, really”, Shiffrin said.

But that was all part of the plan.

“That makes me so mad”, Shiffrin said. “I was charging out of the start”. “I was attacking, really attacking like insane”.

The Olympic and world slalom champion said “anger” from that accident had motivated her for the weekend. “After the first two gates, I didn’t feel the nerves anymore”. She now has 17 victories in 72 World Cup races and has been on the podium 27.

This was Shiffrin’s fifth straight World Cup slalom win dating to last season.

The 1-2 finish of Shiffrin and Brignone after the first leg was the reverse of last month’s season-opening GS race in Soelden, Austria. But the 31-year-old was beginning to find her rhythm when her left ski popped off. She was not hurt when she slid into the side netting, calling the wipeout “super annoying”.

Brem was the defending champion in the event, but was in eighth place after the first run and 1.37 seconds behind Shiffrin.

Hansdotter was 2.65 seconds back; Strachova was 2.90 back. I just wasn’t satisfied, it wasn’t the way I’ve been training. “She’s just sending it”. I hear the hotel is really nice and the hill is better still.

“Nobody likes to get beat by three seconds”, Shiffrin said.

“(Shiffrin) was born and raised on this snow”, Hansdotter said.

In a foreshadowing of her second run Saturday on the Aspen Mountain slalom course, Shiffrin said “I’m lucky to be in this position, and I’m not going to take it for granted”. “Sometimes I’m surprised at the times, but I think that’s how I’m skiing”.

Resi Stiegler of Jackson, Wyoming, finished tied for 10th, giving the US two skiers in the top 10 in the third World Cup race in Aspen in three days.

These days, she’s simply on a different level.

Shiffrin could nearly sense victory. “I’m like, ‘Forget that yesterday happened, just do the same exact thing.’ It was actually amusing, a lot of the day today felt like some of the exact same stuff happened, and I just did the same things and it worked, so that was good”.

“Yesterday was such a big margin and I wondered what happened”, Shiffrin said.

She can gain some consolation here with slaloms Saturday and Sunday. “I want to see what World Cup speed can be”.

And she more than doubled her lead on the second run with a faultless display to clock a combined time on one minute 39.81secs.