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GERGEL, Austria – American ski star Michaela Shiffrin heads into her home races in Colorado next weekend as the overall World Cup leader on a two-event winning streak.
Shiffrin dominated another slalom on Sunday as she made two convincing wins out of two races in the discipline to kick off the Olympic season.
Racing in cool but cool conditions in the Austrian Alps, Shiffrin posted the fastest time in both runs, 1.23 seconds ahead of second-placed Lara Coulturi, an Italian pro who was competing for Albania.
The pair also went 1-2 in the first slalom of the season in Finland a week ago, where Shiffrin also led both runs and won by 1.66.
“I think it’s some of the best slalom skiing I’ve done,” said Shiffrin, who won his 66th World Cup in slalom and 103rd overall, both records.
Slalom world champion Camille Rast finished 1.41 behind in third, as the podium was the same as last year’s race in Gurgaon. His Swiss teammate Wendy Hölderer finished fourth.
Shaffin’s next races are a giant slalom on Saturday and a slalom the next day at Copper Mountain, the U.S. Ski Team’s regular training base.
The women’s race follows the two men’s events at Copper Mountain on Thursday and Friday.
“I’m really excited to go to Copper. I mean I’ve been in my own bed for the first time during the season since we’ve been going to Aspen,” Shiffrin said.
On Sunday, Shiffrin led Caltori by 0.31 after a tight opening run, but used an all-attacking final leg to widen the gap to four times.
“I had to push a lot, but it was really good with the sun on the second run,” Shiffrin said. “It was pretty much as I expected, not easy, but I knew the others were pushing, so I had no choice. You must go.”
Shaffin and Coulturi are now ranked 1-2 in both the slalom and overall standings after three events. Shiffrin’s teammate Paula Molzahn finished third after finishing fifth in Sunday’s race.
Molzan was second and Schifferin fourth in the season-opening giant slalom in October, which was won by Austrian skier Julia Scheib.
Shiffrin also won the first two slaloms of the season in Levy and Gurgel last year, but then suffered a horrific crash in a GS while chasing 100 career wins in Killington, Vermont, in November.
She returned two months later and won two more slaloms, but announced before the current season that she planned to reduce her schedule to slalom and GS, and perhaps super-G, heading into the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in February.
“I focused a lot on giant slalom during the preparation period, trying to get my level back to something decent in the GS races. So, I didn’t do a lot of slalom training, but I got good slalom training,” said Shiffrin, who won Olympic gold in slalom in 2014 and GS four years later.
With 2022 Olympic champion Petra Vilhova still recovering from a debilitating injury she suffered in January 2024, Caltori has become Shiffrin’s main rival in the slalom.
“It’s just amazing to be back here on the podium,” Coulturi said. “I wasn’t feeling so good during my run because these types of conditions are not the best thing for me.”
Born in Italy, Caltori was 16 when he made his World Cup debut for Albania three years ago. He won the junior world title at super-G in January 2023, but his rise was halted the following month after he tore the ACL in his right knee in a training accident.
Coulteri took his first career podium at Gurgaon last year and scored three more top-three results to finish eighth in the overall standings, before adding two more places this month.
“She’s just amazing,” Coulturi said of Shiffrin. “Our goals, from me and from everyone else, is just to ski like him, to be perfect like him, but it’s really difficult.”
