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The duel between Mikaela Shiffrin and her Swiss rival Camille Rast is progressing well with 45 days left until the women's slalom race at the Cortina Winter Olympics in Milan.
Rust ended Shiffrin's six-race World Cup slalom winning streak on Sunday, beating the American star by 0.14 seconds after posting the fastest time in both runs at the Slovenia event.
Rast, the slalom world champion, also led Shiffrin last week in Austria after the first stage, but the American fought back by more than half a second on a deteriorating course to narrowly win.
Swiss skier Camilla Rast won Sunday's World Cup slalom race in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, in 1:40.20.
On Sunday, however, Rust held on to the lead in the first run and took her fourth career win and third in the slalom before being hugged by Shiffrin at the finish line.
“Her skating is so strong, and it grew and grew and grew,” Shiffrin said of Rasta. “In the last races she had mistakes that cost her time. And today, when I saw how she skied in the first run, I had to give it 120% to have a chance. So it was a big, big, amazing day for her.”
Shiffrin was still happy with her skiing and celebrated by pumping her fist after completing her final run while Rust had not yet started.
“I had a very specific goal in the second run, a little technical, and I felt like I really achieved it,” Shiffrin said.
“It was the hardest thing I could have done. I pushed so hard, it was like a little mistake here and a little mistake there, and I don't think it was worth the time. That's exactly what I tried. I could feel the twists I wanted to feel.”
Sunday's victory came a day after Rust took her first giant slalom victory on the same hill and dedicated the victory to the victims of a bar fire in Crans-Montana near her hometown of Vetroz.
“I gave it everything I had this weekend. To do a double in the same weekend is just amazing. I'm so happy,” Rust said, adding that “a lot of energy” was the key to her triumph.
“It was a bit of a battle, but I had a lot of fun. And the slope, wow, was amazing, the preparation was top notch.”
The duo were well ahead of the rest of the field, with Rust's teammate Wendy Holdener 1.83 seconds behind in third place, her first podium finish in almost a year.
Shiffrin's teammate Paula Molzahn, who finished fourth, was the only rider less than two seconds off the pace.
Shiffrin, who won slalom gold at the 2014 Olympics and has four world titles in the discipline, won last season's final race before winning the first five slaloms of the current campaign to extend her career record to 69 slalom wins and 106 overall, a World Cup record.
Reigning World Cup slalom winner Zrinka Ljutic of Croatia failed to finish for the fourth time in six races this season.
Italian prodigy Lara Colturi, competing for Albania, lost her balance and fell during her first run on a course set by her father and coach Alessandro Colturi. She has placed on the podium in four of her previous five slalom events this season.
The next slalom is a night race on January 13 in Flachau, where Rast triumphed last year and Shiffrin has won five times in the past. The last slalom before the Olympic Games will take place on January 25 in the Czech Republic.
The downhill and super-G are scheduled for next weekend at another Austrian resort, Zauchensee.
There were no men's World Cup races this weekend.
