[ad_1]
SÖLDEN, Austria (AP) — A pleasant pat on the again from her rival Petra Vlhova and an extended hug from boyfriend Aleksander Aamodt Kilde within the end space have been Mikaela Shiffrin’s rewards for excelling within the season-opening World Cup big slalom on Saturday.
Shiffrin confirmed two runs of close to flawless snowboarding on one of many hardest hills on the ladies’s circuit to earn her seventieth profession win.
The American Olympic champion’s efficiency was an excessive amount of even for Lara Intestine-Behrami, the reigning GS world champion from Switzerland.
With 2020 total males’s champion Kilde wanting on, Shiffrin sat .02 behind Intestine-Behrami after the opening leg however put in one other clear run within the second to edge her Swiss rival by .14 in good sunny situations on the Rettenbach glacier.
“Beginning off the season sturdy is vital, so I’m tremendous pleased,” Shiffrin mentioned. “It’s a pleasure to ski right this moment, they did so superb with this (course) preparation, it felt so superb to ski this hill.”
The pair completed properly forward of the remainder of the sphere, with defending total champion Petra Vlhova of Slovakia trailing by 1.30 seconds in third.
Shiffrin turned solely the third skier in World Cup historical past to succeed in the 70-win mark, after Ingemar Stenmark and Lindsey Vonn achieved the feat earlier than they completed their careers on 86 and 82 wins, respectively.
“I assume now it’s,” mentioned Shiffrin when requested whether or not the variety of 70 meant one thing particular to her. “It’s a nice achievement, I’m proud. Seventy is unimaginable however the aim right this moment was to ski properly.”
And Shiffrin did simply that on Saturday.
She opened race with a clear run, briefly shrugged her shoulders after ending, however her time simply held up when different pre-race favorites got here down.
Solely Intestine-Behrami, who had an aggressive run in good sunny situations on the Rettenbach glacier, led Shiffrin’s time by a couple of hundredths all through her run.
Intestine-Behrami had the quicker begin and was .09 forward on the first cut up however misplaced a fraction of her lead over Shiffrin at every of the next examine factors.
“It was a very tremendous clear run. I felt actually good in my snowboarding,” Shiffrin mentioned after the primary run. “Watching Lara, she can also be tremendous on level and perhaps a bit of bit extra energetic, like a bit of additional one thing.”
The battle for victory took an intriguing flip within the second leg.
After Shiffrin put stress on Intestine-Bahrami by posting the quickest second-run tun by far, the Swiss skier discovered herself .10 down on the first examine level, however received time on Shiffrin coming into the steep center part, regaining the lead with a bonus of .24.
Nevertheless, she did not match Shiffrin on the underside part.
“It doesn’t actually matter, first or second,” Intestine-Behrami mentioned. “It’s simply good for me to start out the season like that, realizing that I’m snowboarding quick.”
The Swiss skier, who received the general title in 2016, used the summer season preparation for “engaged on confidence, on little issues. I’m attempting to get the perfect from every run and I’m actually pleased I might convey that again within the race.”
Vlhova mentioned shedding 1.30 seconds didn’t damage her an excessive amount of.
“I don’t suppose that I’m that far behind them,” the Slovakian skier mentioned. “In the present day it was like this, however subsequent race it may be utterly totally different.”
Shiffrin’s thirteenth win in GS got here seven years after she received her first race within the self-discipline on the identical venue, sharing the 2014 victory with Austria’s Anna Fenninger.
A number of of Shiffrin most important challengers had a tough begin to their seasons.
Most notably, Italian GS specialists Marta Bassino and Federica Brignone each skied out.
Bassino, who received the race a yr in the past and dominated the self-discipline with 4 wins final season, misplaced management of her proper exterior ski midway by her first run, when she was already .57 behind then-leader Shiffrin.
Brignone was 1.52 behind after the primary run in fifteenth earlier than hooking a gate along with her left arm within the second.
Different massive names struggled as properly, with French standout Tessa Worley ending 2.06 behind in eighth and New Zealand’s Alice Robinson, who received the season opener in 2019, coming 2.41 seconds off the lead in eleventh.
Coming so early within the winter season, the normal season-opener in October is often a race the place many skiers fail to search out their rhythm, seven months after the tip of the earlier season.
“Generally persons are not pushing so arduous, they only strive nearly to make use of it as coaching, however you actually need to assault this hill,” Shiffrin mentioned.
Shiffrin led a robust exhibiting by the U.S. ski staff, which had 4 of their 5 starters scoring World Cup factors, together with a career-best ninth place for Nina O’Brien. Additionally, AJ Harm positioned twentieth, and Paula Moltzan completed in twenty third.
Amid tight anti-coronavirus measures, the race was attended by 9,000 spectators.
A minute’s silence previous to the race was devoted to Gian Franco Kasper, the longstanding FIS president who died in July, simply weeks after Johan Eliasch was elected as his successor.
The boys’s World Cup begins Sunday with a GS on the identical hill.
___
Extra AP snowboarding: https://apnews.com/hub/snowboarding and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
___
Eric Willemsen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/eWilmedia
[ad_2]
Source link
