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CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Even when it wasn’t gold, Mikaela Shiffrin’s thirteenth medal at a significant championship felt totally different from all her earlier ones.
For the primary time in a technical race, she had an American teammate subsequent to her competing for victory.
Shiffrin and Nina O’Brien had the 2 quickest instances within the opening run of the ladies’s big slalom on the world championships on Thursday.
Earlier than the second run, they stood shut on the hill inspecting the course. Shared a carry experience up the hill. And exchanged variety phrases earlier than snowboarding down, one after the opposite.
It felt like an strange coaching session, slightly than the decisive run for gold.
Whereas O’Brien dropped to tenth, Shiffrin earned a silver medal behind Swiss winner Lara Intestine-Behrami to provide her considered one of every shade at these worlds — and along with her greatest occasion, slalom, nonetheless to come back.
In complete, Shiffrin now has 10 profession world championship medals to go along with three Olympic ones.
“I’ve by no means been on this place to take a look at my teammate after we’re each taking place battling for a medal,” Shiffrin mentioned. “The final two racers with an opportunity for a medal is at all times a particular feeling however having your teammate there, it feels totally different. It’s actually cool.”
For the U.S. ski staff this was a primary — however not a fluke.
In slalom and GS, it was all about Shiffrin for a few years. However the entire tech staff is having a breakout season on the World Cup circuit, with a number of private bests for O’Brien, AJ Damage, and Paula Moltzan, who even had her first profession podium in Austria in November.
“I believe it’s actually cool and we’re fortunate to have Mikaela as our teammate for main the cost and provoking us all,” O’Brien mentioned. “Nevertheless it’s additionally enjoyable to see that this subsequent group of us can usher in some velocity as properly.”
Whereas Shiffrin works along with her personal teaching workers, the staff trains collectively when schedules permit.
“It’s at all times tremendous productive and helpful coaching along with her, simply watching her and speaking along with her about snowboarding,” O’Brien mentioned. “She’s received a reasonably insane understanding of the game, like nobody else I do know.”
Shiffrin’s assist went past shared coaching at a World Cup GS in Austria final season, when she was quickest within the first run and took the carry again up the hill to assist late starter O’Brien.
Shiffrin briefly skilled the sensation of going head-to-head with a teammate for gold on the worlds two years in the past, when she and Lindsey Vonn aimed for the super-G victory.
Whereas Vonn crashed within the penultimate race of her profession, Shiffrin claimed the gold.
The rising energy of the tech staff pleases Shiffrin.
“They’ve simply an incredible angle, it’s a very nice ambiance now,” she mentioned. “It simply looks like we might be completely satisfied for one another, push one another, and it’s simple. There is no such thing as a drama, it’s simply racing and snowboarding.”
After going her whole profession with out a main championship title, Intestine-Behrami added a second gold medal to her burgeoning assortment from this 12 months’s worlds.
The Swiss skier made up her deficit to Shiffrin with a blistering ultimate leg to beat the American by two-hundredths of a second.
“GS has at all times been so vital for me in my whole profession,” the Swiss skier mentioned. “I at all times knew that if I’m snowboarding properly in GS then it’s straightforward to be quick even within the different disciplines.”
Katharina Liensberger of Austria was 0.09 behind in third in what was the closest end ever of a ladies’s big slalom on the worlds.
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