Skier Shiffrin snares 50th slalom win

Mikaela Shiffrin led Paula Moltzan for an American 1-2 finish in a night slalom to become the first ski racer with 50 World Cup wins in a single discipline.

No other skier, female or male, has won an event more than 46 times in the 56-year World Cup history.

The result on Thursday also marked Shiffrin’s 80th World Cup win overall — two short of Lindsey Vonn’s women’s record.

Building on a big first-run lead of more than seven-tenths of a second, Shiffrin overcame several mistakes in her final run on the deteriorating course to finish 0.29 ahead of Moltzan, who had her first career podium in the discipline.

It was the first time since 1971 that the U.S. ski team went 1-2 in a women’s World Cup slalom.

“Paula had a ripping run, I saw that from the start. I thought she might win this race. It’s so special to share a podium with her,” Shiffrin said. “I don’t have much to say about 80, I don’t know what to say.”

Germany’s Lena Dürr was 0.34 behind in third, followed by Shiffrin’s biggest rivals in slalom, Petra Vlhová and Wendy Holdener, who were the only other racers within a second of the winning time.

Shiffrin can match her former teammate Vonn’s achievement of 82 World Cup wins next week, when two slaloms are scheduled in Zagreb, Croatia.

Only Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark won more races than Vonn and Shiffrin, with 86.

Shiffrin has won six races this season, including the last four: last week’s super-G in St. Moritz and two giant slaloms over the last two days.

Adding to its usual schedule of a GS and a slalom, Semmering this time hosted a giant slalom that was cancelled in another Austrian resort, Sölden, in October.

Shiffrin also won all three events the previous time the resort near the capital Vienna staged races on three consecutive days, in December 2016.

She laid the foundation for her triumph in the opening run, where she was more than seven-tenths of a second faster than her closest challenger, Anna Swenn Larsson. The Swede struggled in her second run and dropped to shared sixth position with Croatian prodigy Zrinka Ljutic.