Shiffrin runner-up in return
U.S. skier happy with second after long time away from the slopes
Mikaela Shiffrin, racing for the first time since January, settled for second place behind Petra Vlhova in a World Cup slalom on Saturday but still “felt a lot of happiness” to finally get back in the start gate.
“I enjoy a second place more than I did ever before,” said Shiffrin, a winner of 66 World Cup races, “because I felt I was pushing and having some good skiing. It was the best I could today. I feel I can be more proud of that than I used to be.”
Vlhova, the World Cup slalom champion from Slovakia, posted the fastest times in both runs to beat the American by 0.18 seconds in Finnish Lapland, north of the Arctic Circle.
But for Shiffrin, the result wasn’t her biggest concern.
“It’s been really hard to imagine being here again and racing. And being on the podium, that’s just something I almost didn’t dare to really imagine, because you don’t want to be disappointed again,” the double Olympic champion said.
Shiffrin’s previous season ended prematurely after the death of her father, Jeff Shiffrin. That was followed by the cancellation of the season-ending races amid the coronavirus outbreak, and then she sat out the first race of the new season in Austria in October with a back injury.
The 25-year-old Shiffrin had wondered whether she wanted to continue her ski racing career, but after Saturday’s race she sounded optimistic.
“I hope from here I can keep going because I want to,” she said. “I felt a lot of happiness skiing today, and racing. I had fun and I felt I did some really good skiing. After everything that has happened, it is really cool to just be able to ski race and get a podium, and get a second place, that’s like, wow!”
Racing the second run on a course set by her coach Livio Magoni, Vlhova earned her fourth straight slalom win.
“I tried to take this advantage that my coach set the course, and I did it,” Vlhova said.
Austria’s Katharina Liensberger was 0.57 behind in third.