Shiffrin erased a 0.54-second deficit, her largest in more than a decade, to win the slalom in Semmering, Austria on Sunday, Dec. 28. She is now five-for-five in slalom races this season, and has won six in a row going back to last season.
Shiffrin’s time of 1:48.82 was 0.09 seconds ahead of Switzerland’s Camille Rast, the first run leader. Albania’s Lara Colturi was third, 0.57 seconds behind Shiffrin.
‘Today was hard,’ Shiffrin said after the race. ‘It was a really hard day today. Tough conditions. It was a really big fight, and I did my best possible run.’
Shiffrin was fourth in the first run, trailing Rast by more than half a second. It was the first time this season Shiffrin had not won the first run, and she acknowledged she misjudged what she needed to do on a course that was inconsistent and broke down quickly.
She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Though Shiffrin had rallied to win in 16 of her previous 68 slalom victories, you have to go back to 2013 for the last time she erased this large of a deficit. But she came charging out of the gate on the second run, taking a tight line and attacking every gate.
It wasn’t her usual fluid style, but this was a night for fighting not flow.
‘It didn’t feel good,’ Shiffrin said in her post-race interview. ‘I didn’t expect to come down with a green light.’
She did, though, finishing almost a second ahead of then-leader Katharina Truppe of Austria.
There were still three skiers left, and Shiffrin had to wait to see if her time would hold up. Neither Colturi nor Katharina Liensberger of Austria could match Shiffrin. That left just Rast, the first-run leader who’d finished second in the giant slalom race a day earlier.
Rast clung to a slight lead halfway through the course. But she made a mistake on the bottom half of the course, and that error would prove to be the difference.
Rast fell 0.01 seconds behind Shiffrin after the third sector, and the gap would only widen until the finish line.
Shiffrin nodded when she saw the final results. She wound up winning by 0.09 seconds, her smallest margin – by far – this season. She’d won her first four races by a margin of 1.5 seconds.
The victory was the 106th of Shiffrin’s World Cup career, extending her own record. She also expanded her lead in the overall standings; she is now 195 points ahead of Rast and 214 points in front of Alice Robinson of New Zealand.
‘It was so close today. Camille was outstanding on both runs. And yesterday,’ Shiffrin said. ‘To do this following up a podium yesterday and in also a really, really challenging race, I have so much respect for that performance.
‘I made one less mistake on the second run in this course and in these conditions,’ Shiffrin added. ‘That was the ticket.’
Though Shiffrin was able to overcome the conditions, she made it clear she thought they were unfair and posed a threat to the health and safety of the skiers. Especially those who came later in the starting order on the first run.
The top layer of the surface disintegrated almost immediately on the first run, and there were holes throughout the course during both runs. There were 39 DNFs in the field of 79 in the first run, and only 17 skiers who started outside the top 30 finished that first run.
During inspection for the second run, Shiffrin said she and two other skiers noticed that a gate had been set in a way that violated the distance requirements. After ‘basically arguing, or communicating’ with race officials, the course was setup was modified.
While that made it safer – there were only five DNFs in the second run – Shiffrin said it still wasn’t fair.
‘I don’t think it was great to reset the course when 27 athletes had already inspected it. But I don’t think the way they would have skied it (with the original set up) was safe at all,’ Shiffrin said.
‘What happened, or the decision that was made, was correct for safety. In the end, it made the course less complicated, less confusing,’ she added. ‘So I think it ran OK. For the situation, it was the best that it could possibly be. But I don’t like how it was done.’
These are not sour grapes. Shiffrin made it clear that the conditions in the first run were not why she was fourth. Rast and others skied better than she did, managed the course better.
But she knows her opinion is going to carry weight. She has more World Cup victories than any other skier in history, male or female, and is a five-time overall champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist.
She also knows she can go public with her criticisms in a way that other, lesser-known or lesser-experienced skiers cannot, and she doesn’t want anyone feeling as if a race is unfair or unsafe.
‘The way that the course deteriorated on the first run made it very, very challenging and borderline unsafe for (most) athletes. Challenging is an understatement,’ Shiffrin said. ‘… I want it to be a good day for everybody.’