US ski star Shiffrin keeps streak going with come-from-behind win in World Cup night slalom

SEMMERING, Austria (AP) — Mikaela Shiffrin came from behind to win a World Cup night slalom in tough conditions Sunday and extend her winning streak in the discipline to six races.

The American was fourth, more than half a second off the pace, in the opening session on a rapidly deteriorating course, but posted the fastest time in the evening to beat first-run leader Camille Rast.

The world champion from Switzerland finished 0.09 seconds behind. Italian-born prodigy Lara Colturi, 19, who competes for Albania, was 0.57 back in third.

“It was a really hard day today, tough conditions, a really big fight, and the pressure’s on. And oh, I did my best, best possible run,” Shiffrin said in a course-side interview.

“It didn’t feel like good. I didn’t expect to come down with the green light. It’s been one of those days, it’s like: ‘Let’s refocus and be positive and try’.”

Five wins in a row matches Shiffrin’s personal best start to a slalom season, after achieving the feat in 2018-19.

She won the final race of last season and then dominated the first four slaloms of the current Olympic campaign, winning them by an average margin of 1.5 seconds, before adding Sunday’s narrow win.

In the first run, Shiffrin was one-hundredth of a second ahead of Rast halfway down the Panorama course but lost considerable time on the Swiss racer in the bottom section.

“It’s a pretty tough one. I think, probably, a little bit like overskiing, too round, compared to what’s possible,” Shiffrin said.

Shiffrin, who was the 2014 Olympic champion and holds the women’s World Cup record of 69 slalom victories, won the slalom in Semmering three times before, most recently in 2022 after she had triumphed in back-to-back giant slaloms in two days in the resort near the Austrian capital Vienna.

She extended her lead over second-placed Colturi to 220 points in the slalom standings. The World Cup schedule includes three more slaloms in January before the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, and then two in March. A race win is worth 100 points.

Croatia’s Zrinka Ljutic, who won the race last season and went on to take the slalom globe, was a massive 3.75 seconds behind in eighth.

Shiffrin’s teammate Paula Moltzan was seventh after the first run but straddled a gate in the second, a day after she crashed and fell on her back and head in a giant slalom on the same hill. That race was won by Austria’s Julia Scheib, who does not compete in slalom.

The women’s World Cup travels to Slovenia for a giant and slalom in Kranjska Gora next weekend.

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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing