Mikaela Shiffrin wins 4th straight slalom of Olympic season as rivals fall short in night race

Mikaela Shiffrin doesn’t just win every slalom in the Olympic season. He wins each race and wins by huge margins.

The American standout cruised to his 105th World Cup win after most of his rivals dropped out during the opening night race on Tuesday in Courcheval, France.

Shiffrin added to her early lead and finished in one minute, 42.50 seconds, 1.55 ahead of Swiss skier Camille Rast and 1.71 ahead of German runner Emma Aicher.

Shiffrin has now won four season-opening slaloms, and five in a row including last season’s final race.

Rast and Aicher moved up to third and fourth in the overall standings, respectively. Shiffrin leads with 558 points, followed by Alice Robinson (394), Rast (343) and Aicher (319).

Laurence St-Germain of St.-Ferreol-les-Neiges, Que., stepped up in Tuesday’s second run, placing 13th for top Canadian honors, 3.97 seconds behind Shiffrin. Amelia Smart of Invermere, BC was 23rd out of 24 finishers.

All of Shiffrin’s points wins this season have come within a full second, and three of them are over 1.5 seconds: 1.66 in Levi Finland; 1.23 in Gurgl, Austria; and 1.57 at Copper Mountain, Colorado before his latest performance in the French Alps.

Do the math and the average limit is 1.5025 seconds.

“I’m just pushing. I’m not asking questions. Sometimes you just have to take it and roll with it,” Shiffrin said. “Lock into this feeling.”

Competitors have encountered difficulties

Lena Duerr, the German who was third after the first run, took the top spot on her second trip down.

Lara Colturi, the Italian skier running for Albania, rode through the gate towards the end of her opening run, ending a streak of three consecutive slalom podiums.

Holdener turns around, stays behind

Wendy Holdener managed to finish in seventh place despite a poor finish at the end of her first run.

Holdener hit a hole in the finish line, flipped through the air and landed on his back. After holding the pain for a few seconds, he got up and left. It was not clear if he was injured but he entered the second race.

Defending World Cup slalom champion Zrinka Ljutic and Olympic silver medalist Katharina Liensberger, the next two starters, came from the middle and bottom.

It is the third straight slalom that Ljutic has failed to complete.

Austria’s Katharina Truppe finished fourth and American skier Paula Moltzan moved up from ninth to fifth with the second-fastest run.

Shiffrin earned her 68th World Cup slalom. She also won gold in the slalom at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, then took gold in the giant slalom four years later at the Pyeongchang games.

But Shiffrin didn’t medal at the 2022 Beijing Games.

Women’s alpine skiing at the Feb. Olympics. 6-22 will be held in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, where Shiffrin has won four medals in her four events at the 2021 world championships and where Lindsey Vonn holds the record for 12 World Cup victories.

Vonn, who won the downhill last week at age 41, no longer competes in the slalom.

Vonn will be back in action this weekend in the downhill and super-G at nearby Val d’Isere.