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Petra Vlhova roared from behind to win the Olympic girls’s slalom by 0.08sec on Wednesday solely hours after Mikaela Shiffrin’s bid for a history-making medal haul in Beijing was left in tatters when the American star was disqualified from a second straight race.
Vlhova, a six-time world champion medallist who had by no means beforehand made an Olympic podium, was 0.72sec again in eighth after the primary run. However the 26-year-old surged into gold-medal place after a masterful second descent down the steep technical course often known as the Ice River with a mixed time of 1min 44.98sec, then watched tensely from the end space because the seven rivals who clocked sooner morning occasions took their finest photographs.
One after the other they got here up brief till Vlhova raised each fists and pumped them towards the sky earlier than embracing her staff, having received Slovakia’s first medal in alpine snowboarding by lower than one-tenth of a second over Austria’s Katharina Liensberger, the reigning world slalom champion, who settled for silver. Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener was 0.12sec off the tempo, including a bronze to her Olympic slalom silver from Pyeongchang 4 years in the past.
“Truthfully, it was actually troublesome to be calm and targeted on my snowboarding,” stated Vlhova, whose gold medal is Slovakia’s first at a Winter Video games not in biathlon or snowboarding. “However I had lots of energy from my staff. They trusted me, they believed in me and so they repeated to me: ‘You’re so robust, simply ski free, get pleasure from and focus in your snowboarding, nothing else’. They had been all the time repeating this to me in between the 2 runs. I gave every thing I had and on the finish I’m Olympic champion.”
One of the anticipated occasions on the alpine snowboarding programme had been framed as a showdown between Vlhova and Shiffrin, whose neck-and-neck race atop the overall World Cup standings has held the game in its thrall all 12 months. They’ve mixed to win each slalom on this season’s schedule with one-two finishes in all however two of them.
However Shiffrin’s day was over virtually earlier than it began. Seventh out of the beginning gate for her first run, the American was pressured off line and practically fell after considered one of her skis kicked out too broad on a flip across the fourth gate.
The 2-time Olympic champion then sat within the snow alongside the netting on the aspect of the hill along with her head bowed in disbelief for greater than 10 minutes as her rivals continued their first makes an attempt down the course, which on Wednesday was set by Shiffrin’s long-time private coach, Mike Day.
The extraordinary consequence got here two days after Shiffrin skied out during her first run of the giant slalom, which ended her Olympic title defence solely seconds into her Beijing debut. The 26-year-old had failed to complete a race solely twice in 4 years coming into the Video games and 13 occasions in a complete of 228 begins throughout all disciplines at World Cup, Olympic and world championship occasions. Her final consecutive DNFs in technical races? Again in December 2011, when she was 16.
“Fairly terrible,” a tearful Shiffrin stated afterward within the blended zone. “However I received’t really feel terrible ceaselessly. I simply really feel fairly low proper now.” She added: “I used to be pushing out of the beginning. I had full intentions of snowboarding as laborious as I may. I slipped up just a little bit on one flip and I simply didn’t give myself room to make any sort of error like that. I used to be planning to go on probably the most aggressive line, probably the most difficult line to ski. However I additionally realize it’s the quickest.”
Germany’s Lena Dürr was unable to carry on to her 0.03sec lead after the primary run and got here in fourth, bursting into tears within the end space after realising she missed her first medal at any main championship by an agonising 0.07sec.
Sara Hector of Sweden, who received gold in Monday’s big slalom and was third-fastest after Wednesday’s first run, went for broke on her second journey and appeared on track to grow to be the fourth girl to finish the Olympic technical double solely to straddle a gate close to the underside of the course on the south aspect of Xiaohaituo Mountain.
Shiffrin, whose three Olympic medals embody gold in slalom in 2014 and in big slalom in 2018, stated her plan is to race all 5 particular person occasions in Beijing. Her subsequent likelihood to make historical past as the primary US alpine skier to win three Olympic golds will come on Friday within the super-G, the pace race which she has by no means entered in two earlier Winter Video games however did win on the 2019 world championships. She can even have medal possibilities in Tuesday’s downhill and on Thursday week within the alpine mixed, the place she took silver in 2018.
Since changing into the youngest Olympic slalom champion in historical past in 2014, Shiffrin has dominated the game’s most technical self-discipline like nobody earlier than. She’s received extra World Cup slalom races than any male or feminine skier (47), together with 4 world championships and 6 World Cup self-discipline titles, that are awarded for sustained excellence over the course of a whole season.
However over time the Colorado native has blossomed from a specialist into the world’s finest all-around skier, branching out into the pace occasions with success and changing into the one individual, man or girl, to win World Cup races in all six disciplines. Her 73 profession wins on alpine snowboarding’s prime circuit are third-most on the all-time leaderboard, trailing solely Swedish nice Ingemar Stenmark (86) and longtime US teammate Lindsey Vonn (82).
Shiffrin’s failure to complete both of her races up to now was the most recent bitter observe in what has been a bleak Beijing Olympics up to now for Staff USA. The People’ longest-ever wait for his or her first gold at a Winter Video games – which stretched previous greater than 30 occasions and at last ended with Lindsey Jacobellis’s shock win in snowboard cross in a while Wednesday – included a number of of their hottest medal contenders lacking the rostrum fully, amongst them defending Olympic champion Crimson Gerard (males’s snowboard slopestyle) and pace skaters Brittany Bowe (girls’s 1500m) and Joey Mantia (males’s 1500m).
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