Shiffrin crushes field in season-ending slalom
ARE: Mikaela Shiffrin, who has already clinched the event title, crushed the field to win the final World Cup slalom of the season in Are, Sweden. The American, who led by just under half a second after the first leg, completed her two runs in a combined time of 1min 46.42sec to finish 1.48sec ahead of Wendy Holdener of Switzerland with Swede Frida Hansdotter third another hundredth of a second back.
The gap between Shiffrin and Holdener in second, was larger than the gap between Holdener and the 12th place finisher, another Swiss Denise Feierabend. The drama in the second run occurred lower down the standings as Slovak Petra Vlhova, third after the first run, collapsed to 11th to drop from second in the event standings to fourth.
Holdener jumped up to second while Hansdotter nipped past Vlohva to take third by two points. For Shiffrin this was a seventh World Cup victory of the season, and 32nd in her career, in her favourite event. In total, Shiffrin, who turned 23 last Tuesday, has won 43 World Cup races.
She missed a medal in the slalom in the Olympics where she finished fourth but she did leave Pyeongchang with a gold in the giant slalom and silver in the combined. Shiffrin clinched the World Cup slalom title for the fifth time with victory last week in Ofterschwang in Germany. She is also assured of her second overall title. — AFP