Shiffrin Wins Record Fourth World Slalom Title
Mikaela Shiffrin (Avon, Colo.) won a record fourth-straight FIS Alpine World Ski Championships slalom title with an amazing come-from-behind victory in Are, Sweden, Saturday. Shiffrin’s win was even more impressive considering she was battling not only the best slalom racers in the world but a new opponent - a nasty chest cold.
Despite suffering from a chest infection that left her gasping for breath, Shiffrin did the nearly unthinkable on Saturday by winning her fourth consecutive slalom world title at the Åre 2019 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships. She had to battle back in the second run after sitting in third position following the first leg. While amazing even herself, she became the first skier in history to win four consecutive World Championship golds in a single discipline. She started off the series with gold in the super-G, picked up GS bronze, and concluded again with gold.
“Halfway down the (second) run, I ran out of oxygen,” she said. “It was tough today.” It was so tough that at one point before the second run, she coughed so hard that her stomach went into spasms and she couldn’t breathe. Her mother, Eileen Shiffrin, said to her: “You don’t have to do this!”
In the end though, Shiffrin “just figured I had to be tough” for 60-seconds and she credited her team with the victory. “My whole team was around me all day and helping to make sure I was drinking...resting... and not wasting energy” she said.
After finishing third in the opening run, Shiffrin toughed it out and found her groove under the warm afternoon sunshine to absolutely nail the second run, moving into the lead by .72 seconds over Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova, and putting significant pressure on the final two racers - Sweden’s Anna Swenn-Larsson and Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener.
“I knew I had to fight really hard the second run because Anna and Wendy are too strong, and the girls who were behind me were also really close,” Shiffrin said.
On the second run, Swenn-Larsson was fast up top but lost time to Shiffrin on the lower part of the course. Holdener, meanwhile, held a .15-second lead over Shiffrin, but quickly lost that and much more when she missed a gate just seconds into her run and was forced to ski back uphill in order to make the gate. She eventually finished 17th.
Swenn-Larsson held on to win the silver, her first World Championships medal, and Vlhova won the bronze, her third medal of the 2019 World Championships. With the win, Shiffrin goes down in the history books, becoming the first-ever athlete - male or female - to win in a specific discipline in four consecutive World Championships. Shiffrin’s slalom gold is her fourth-straight, including 2013, 2015 and 2017 World Championships. It is also her third medal of the 2019 World Championships, including the super-G gold and giant slalom bronze.
Paula Moltzan (Prior Lake, Minn.) finished 18th, and Nina O’Brien (San Francisco, Calif.) skied an impressive first run, but missed a gate in the second and was forced to hike. She finished 34th.
