Shiffrin rules 2nd consecutive women’s World Cup slalom to open Olympic season

American ski star Mikaela Shiffrin heads into her home race in Colorado next weekend as the overall World Cup leader on a two-event winning streak.

Shiffrin dominated another slalom on Sunday, taking two convincing victories in two races in the event to kick off the Olympic season.

Racing in sunny but cold conditions in the Austrian Alps, Shiffrin set the fastest time in both events and finished in one minute 48.11 seconds, 1.23 ahead of second place Lara Colturi, the Italian prodigy competing for Albania.

The pair also went 1-2 in the first slalom of the season a week ago in Finland, where Shiffrin also led both runs and won by 1.66.

“I think this is one of the best slalom performances I've ever skied,” said Shiffrin, who scored her 66th World Cup slalom victory and 103rd overall. Both results are records.

Slalom world champion Camille Rast of Switzerland clocked a two-run time of 1:49.52, 1.41 behind third place as the podium was reminiscent of last year's Gurgl race.

Shiffrin's next races are a giant slalom on Saturday and a slalom the next day at Copper Mountain, the U.S. Ski Team's regular training base.

The women's race follows two men's races at Copper Mountain on Thursday and Friday.

“I’m really excited to go to Copper. I mean, I'm staying in my bed for the first time this season since we went to Aspen,” Shiffrin said.

“I had to push so hard.”

On Sunday, Shiffrin led Colturi 31-100 seconds after a difficult first run, but used an all-out attack in the closing stages to quadruple the lead.

“I had to try really hard, but the second time the sun set, it was really nice,” Shiffrin said. “Everything was about as I expected, not easy, but I knew the others were insisting, so I had no choice. You have to go.”

Shiffrin and Kolturi are now ranked 1-2 in both slalom and overall after three events. Shiffrin's teammate Paula Molzahn finished third after finishing fifth in Sunday's race.

Molzahn was second and Shiffrin fourth in the season-opening giant slalom in October, won by Austrian skier Julia Scheib.

Shiffrin also won the first two slaloms of the season in Levi and Gurgl last year, but then scary accident in the GS Career Chase, win 100 points in Killington, Vermont in November.

She returned two months later and won two more slalomsbut announced before the start of the current season that she planned to trim her schedule to slalom and GS, and possibly a super-G, ahead of a trip to the Cortina Winter Olympics in Milan in February.

“During the preparation period I was so focused on the giant slalom, trying to get my level back to something decent in the GS races. So I didn’t have a lot of slalom training, but I got good slalom training,” said Shiffrin, who won Olympic gold in slalom in 2014 and GS four years later.

Laurence St. Germain was the top Canadian, finishing 11th out of 26 finishers in 1:51.35. The native of Saint-Ferreol-les-Neiges, Que., was 24th after the first run (57.13) but was third fastest in the second (54.22) behind Shiffrin (53.89) and Austria's Katharina Truppe (54.05).

Amelia Smart of Invermere, British Columbia, finished outside the top 30 and missed out on her first run, finishing 36th (58.38). Ali Nullmeyer of Toronto and Kiki Alexander of Cochrane, Alta., were among the 22 people who did not finish the first run.

2022 Olympic champion Petra Vlhova is still recovering from injury. long-term knee injury she endured in January 2024, Colturi has emerged as Shiffrin's main slalom rival.

“It’s just amazing to be back here on the podium,” Colturi said. “I didn’t feel very good during my runs because these conditions are not the best for me.”

Kolturi was born in Italy and was 16 years old when she made her debut for Albania at the World Cup three years ago. She won the world junior super-G title in January 2023, but her rise was stunted after she tore the cruciate ligament in her right knee in a training accident the following month.

Colturi earned her first career podium at Gurgl last year and followed that up with three more top-three finishes to finish eighth overall and added two more second-place finishes this month.

“She’s just amazing,” Colturi said of Shiffrin. “Our goal, mine and everyone else’s, is just to ski like her, to be as perfect as her. But it's really difficult.”