Liensberger Takes First SL Win
Austrian Katharina Liensberger has been close all season and today at the Audi FIS World Cup slalom in Are (SWE) she finally earned her first career World Cup victory.
Austria’s 2021 slalom world champion Katharina Liensberger grabbed her maiden World Cup victory, followed by Shiffrin .72 seconds off the pace, and Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener in third place, 1.65 seconds back.
Liensberger won on the strength of a solid second run, which was nearly a second faster than Shiffrin’s second run efforts. The only racer who was faster than Liensberger in the second round was Petra Vlhova, but due to a massive mistake in the first run, Petra Vlhova, who won Friday’s slalom had an early error and nearly went over the handlebars, losing a significant amount of time. Even still, Vlhova was able to make the flip, with 27th place and had to settle for 8th after the second run
The first run mistake cost Vlhova valuable points in the chase for the Overall Title, she sits 96 points ahead of Lara Gut-Behrami, but could have made the gap much larger with a stronger showing today.
Liensberger came down with a beautiful run, seemingly floating through the gates to take the lead over Holdener by a whopping 1.65 seconds. Shiffrin skied solid but could not keep up with Liensberger, though she was able to hang on to second place.
“It was a pretty good weekend,” reflected Shiffrin. “Yesterday I was really happy with fighting to stay in the race on the second run, and today it was all-around better skiing. The second run was really tough. It was hard to see and hard to see where the tracks were...I knew that Liensberger would be pushing really hard as she did the same thing yesterday and seemed so comfortable with that level of skiing. I knew that would be a really big fight. I tried to push and kind of keep up with the pace, and some spots felt pretty good, so I can take away some good things from it.
At just 26-years-old, Shiffrin has 69 career World Cup victories, three Olympic medals (two gold), and eleven world championship medals (six gold). Her illustrious career seems to be one mind-blowing statistic after another, so here's another to add to the collection: in her last 51 slalom starts, Shiffrin was on the podium 47 times (92%) with 36 victories (71%).
Paula Moltzan skied to a career-best fifth-place finish in the second of two FIS Ski World Cup slalom races in Are, Sweden. Many athletes struggled second run with the light changing drastically, but Moltzan was able to cross the finish line in the lead by .27 seconds. Her strong skiing allowed her to hold the fifth place, for her career-best result. “I’m really happy with the weekend and super excited to be able to put four clean runs down in a row,” Moltzan shared. “It (consistency) is something I have been working really hard on all season. The whole team showed a lot of speed on the first run, and I can promise there are more great things in the near future for the entire team.”
For the second-straight day, Nina O’Brien grabbed 22nd, after making an incredible recovery second run for the solid result. Katie Hensien, AJ Hurt, Lila Lapanja, and Resi Stiegler also started for the Americans. Hensien and Stiegler skied strong, but finished just outside of the 30, while Hurt and Lapanja did not finish.
Liensberger’s victory today, made another globe story even more dramatic as the Austrian bumped Shiffrin down to second place in the slalom globe standings. Vlhova still leads the race for the small globe, but now has only a 22-point lead over Liensberger.
