2024-01-16 21:54:00
Mikaela Shiffrin raced to her 94th World Cup victory in Flachau. The American caught the Slovakian Petra Vlhova in a thrilling final in the slalom. Lena Dürr was still hoping for a podium finish at halftime, but ultimately missed out on the top ten.
After the exceptional driver took a break last weekend in Zauchensee due to health reasons, she set the next exclamation point in Flachau. After taking second place in the first round, the American was able to make up time in the final, especially in the lower part, and won by 27 hundredths of a second ahead of half-time leader Petra Vlhova. During the winner’s interview followingwards, she spoke, close to tears, of “very challenging days”.
Shiffrin breaks the next Stenmark record
Her friend Aleksander Aamodt Kilde had a serious fall while descending Wengen on Saturday and had to be flown to a hospital by helicopter. Shiffrin immediately rushed to her friend’s bedside. This victory, which meant the 81st podium finish in the slalom of her career, was correspondingly close to her heart. In doing so, she set another record set by Swedish ski legend Ingemar Stenmark.
The Slovakian Vlhova was still in the lead following the first run, but was unable to save her wafer-thin lead of seven hundredths of a second to the finish. Vlhova had to settle for second place (+0.27 seconds). Third came the Swede Sara Hector (+1.11 seconds), who was able to celebrate the first slalom podium finish of her career in the World Cup. Lena Dürr was only 15th as the best German.
Dürr’s race to catch up fails
Last winter, Lena Dürr achieved third place on the Hermann Maier World Cup course. This time she should have nothing to do with the podium. Dürr started the race with starting number one. However, the time she set in the first round was unable to put the competition under pressure. She started the final run in seventh place, more than a second behind half-time leader Petra Vlhova (+1.26) and therefore needed to catch up.
Dürr self-critically: “That was clearly not enough”
But that failed completely. The athlete from SV Germering mightn’t find her way into the run and ended up finishing almost two seconds behind. In the end she was 3.37 seconds behind Shiffrin. “That was clearly not enough,” she said of her idea. “I took curves where there weren’t any,” said the third in the slalom ranking, who didn’t want to hang her used evening too high. “It happens, it happens quickly in slalom. If something doesn’t fit together somewhere, it’s difficult for me to drive the momentum the way I want to drive it,” said Dürr: “It seems like something was missing today, whatever.”
Hilzinger, Aicher and Filser miss the final
Jessica Hilzinger, who qualified for the second round of the slalom in Kranjska Gora for the first time this season and ended up 20th, fell back into old patterns in Flachau. She reached the finish in the first run almost four seconds behind (+3.92) and missed the second run in 45th place.
Emma Aicher was hardly faster, but she only missed the final by 0.25 seconds. Aicher was 34th, 3.2 seconds slower than Vlhova. Andrea Filser also didn’t make it into the top 30. She only finished 49th, 4.05 seconds behind Vlhova.
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