Mikaela Shiffrin maintained her winning streak but left Austria disappointed after edging out Switzerland's Camilla Rast in the night slalom at Semmering, criticizing what she called unsafe race conditions at the final Women's World Cup of the calendar year.
The American bounced back from a sluggish first attempt to set the fastest time in the evening session, beating world champion Rast by 0.09 seconds. Albanian-Italian prodigy Lara Kolturi, 19, was 0.57 seconds back in third.
Shiffrin, who started fourth in the first moto, was more than half a second off the pace on the rapidly deteriorating Panorama course, where mild weather forced organizers to inject water and salt into the snow. Despite these measures, the surface broke into several sections during the afternoon session, which began at 14:15 local time.
“I have to say this: It was not safe for the girls to ski,” Shiffrin told Austrian television. “For me, fourth in the first race is not a problem. But for women who started with numbers 13, 15, 18 in the 60s, this is not normal.”
Only 40 of the 77 starters completed the first series, and a gap of almost six seconds was still enough to qualify for the final. Conditions improved slightly during the night session, which took place three and a half hours later when the temperature dropped.
“It was a very difficult and distracting day,” Shiffrin said. “As far as I'm concerned there were no serious injuries, but the way the surface was breaking… the second run was obviously a little better, but I'm disappointed with how it went for these women.”
Shiffrin narrowly led Rust midway through the first run but lost significant time on the bottom, later admitting she had run the course. “It's a pretty difficult question,” she said. “I guess it's a little like skiing – too round for what's possible.”
She corrected those mistakes under pressure in the second run, securing her 106th career World Cup win and extending her slalom dominance. “It was a really tough day, tough conditions, a really big fight,” Shiffrin said. “It was frustrating. I didn't expect to be given the green light.”
The win was Shiffrin's fifth straight to start the season, matching her best start to the 2018-19 season. She ended last season with a win and then dominated the first four slaloms of the current Olympic campaign by an average margin of 1.5 seconds before achieving a narrow success on Sunday.
Shiffrin extended her lead in the slalom standings to 220 points ahead of Colturi, with three more races scheduled in January and two in March ahead of the Cortina Winter Olympics in Milan. Winning the race is worth 100 points.
Croatia's Zrinka Ljutic, last season's Semmering winner and reigning world slalom title holder, finished eighth, 3.75 seconds back. Shiffrin's teammate Paula Molzahn, seventh after the first run, saddled the gates of the second run the day after crashing hard in the giant slalom on the same hill.
The Women's World Championships now move to Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, where the giant slalom and slalom events will take place next weekend.
