12/28/25 08:58:00
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12/28 08:56 CST Shiffrin's winning streak in danger as Swiss skier Rast leads
World Cup slalom after 1st run
Shiffrin's winning streak in danger as Swiss skier Rast leads World Cup slalom
after 1st run
SEMMERING, Austria (AP) --- Mikaela Shiffrin was fourth and more than half a
second off the pace in the opening run of a women's World Cup slalom Sunday,
putting the American's five-race winning streak in the discipline in danger.
Shiffrin posted the fastest second split time and was one-hundredth ahead of
world champion Camille Rast halfway down the Panorama course but lost
considerable time on the Swiss racer in the bottom section and finished 0.54
seconds behind.
Rast led Italian-born prodigy Lara Colturi, who competes for Albania and was
0.09 seconds back in second, and Austria's Katharina Liensberger, who trailed
by 0.34.
"It's a pretty tough one. I think, probably, a little bit like overskiing, too
round, compared to what's possible," Shiffrin told Austrian TV, adding she
planned to analyze video footage of her own and Rast's run before the final leg
later Sunday.
"Imagine like Camille, she is so direct on the gates, if she manages that, what
must be, then it's so quick, so fast, so down the hill," the American said.
Shiffrin won the final race of last season and then dominated the first four
slaloms of the current Olympic campaign, winning them by an average margin of
1.5 seconds.
Shiffrin, who was the 2014 Olympic champion and holds the women's World Cup
record of 68 slalom wins, has won the slalom in Semmering three times, most
recently in 2022 after she had won back-to-back giant slaloms in two days in
the resort near Austrian capital Vienna.
Shiffrin led second-placed Colturi by 180 points in the slalom standings coming
into Sunday's race. The World Cup schedule includes three more slaloms in
January before the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, and then two in March.
Zrinka Ljutic, who won the slalom globe last season, was 10th after the opening
run and the Croatian racer had to make up 2.13 seconds in the final run.
Shiffrin's teammate Paula Moltzan was 1.41 off the lead, a day after she
crashed and fell on her back and head in a giant slalom on the same hill. That
race was won by Austria's Julia Scheib, who does not compete in slalom.
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing
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