SAALBACH, Austria (Reuters) – American Mikaela Shiffrin was in the hunt for a record 16th Alpine Skiing World Championships medal on Saturday after going third fastest in the first run of the final women’s slalom led by Switzerland’s Camille Rast.
Shiffrin took her record-equalling 15th medal when she and downhill champion Breezy Johnson won the new women’s team combined event on Tuesday.
The most successful skier has yet to finish off the podium in her six previous world championship slaloms, winning four golds in a row between 2013-19, silver in 2023 and bronze in 2021.
German skier Christl Cranz won 15 individual medals, a feat Shiffrin can equal, between 1934-39 when the championships were held annually.
Rast set a time of 58.91 seconds in Saalbach with Austria’s Katharina Liensberger, the 2021 champion, 0.58 slower on home snow.
Shiffrin was 0.72 off the pace and Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener fourth, 0.80 behind Rast. American Paula Moltzan was in fifth place but 1.55 off.
“I feel pretty good about it,” said Shiffrin of her run. “The hill is quite long, it’s a good challenging hill. It keeps coming at you and the course-setting was great.
“It was a big challenge to keep up with the pace and for me especially on the end of the course it’s like 15 seconds longer than anything I’ve skied since before Killington so I don’t have very much in my legs left.
“I think this was some of the best skiing I’ve done lately.”
Shiffrin suffered a puncture wound in her left abdomen when she crashed in a giant slalom in Killington, Vermont, last November while chasing a record-extending 100th World Cup victory.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Christian Radnedge)
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