ARE, Sweden (AP) — Mikaela Shiffrin set an all-time World Cup record Sunday with her 156th podium finish though she let victory slip away in a slalom.
Racing through steadily falling snow with a first-run lead, Shiffrin was only 25th-fastest in the second run to finish in third place, 0.19 seconds behind surprise winner Katharina Truppe.
Katharina Liensberger placed second, trailing 0.05 behind her Austria teammate, whose first career World Cup win was earned at age 29.
“Katharina Day!” Shiffrin said in the finish area as she hugged the two racers who beat her.
“I actually feel pretty good about it," Shiffrin said of her fifth slalom race in her comeback from a serious crash in November. "I maybe wasn’t always perfect but I was pushing really hard.”
Shiffrin's 156th top-3 result in her World Cup career broke a tie with Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark. Shiffrin also took the all-time wins record from Stenmark and now has 100 to his 86.
Truppe now has one from her 181st World Cup start, though she has three championship medals including the team event gold at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
“It’s just: ‘Wow.’ I’m a little bit speechless,” said Truppe, who had been sixth-fastest in the morning run, trailing Shiffrin by 0.91. “First victory, it’s crazy. I will enjoy it and soak up all this emotion."
Both Truppe and Shiffrin are aged 29 and won slalom bronze medals at the junior world championships though their careers were on different trajectories. Shiffrin won her medal aged 15 in 2011 and already had two World Cup slalom titles and Olympic gold before Truppe got her junior worlds medal in 2015.
Shiffrin needed to win Sunday to earn 100 race points and stay in contention — though only just – for a ninth career season-long slalom title. She missed four slalom races while recovering from her physical and psychological injuries.
“I’m still trying to get the repetition back. I just have to keep practicing it,” she said.
With Olympic slalom champion Petra Vlhova skipping the entire season to recover from a knee injury, the door opened for a new World Cup title winner.
The World Cup season-ending last slalom is at Sun Valley, Idaho, on March 27 with four skiers ahead of Shiffrin and within 100 points of the lead to lift the crystal globe trophy.
Title-chasing contenders Zrinka Ljutic and Camille Rast, the world championships gold medalist last month, both were below their best form Sunday and placed 10th and 11th, respectively.
Ahead of going to the United States, the 21-year-old Ljutic leads Rast in the slalom standings by 41 points and will win the title with a top-three result. Liensberger, the 2021 champion, and Rast’s Swiss teammate Wendy Holdener also could win.
Shiffrin said she plans to train in Europe before the trip across seven time zones, to the Idaho resort that last staged World Cup races in 1977.
“There’s certainly some travel challenges. It’s a really long distance,” she said. "I guess one more race this season for me but I’m looking forward to it.”
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing
The Associated Press
