American Shiffrin captures another slalom title in Vermont
KILLINGTON, VT. » Mikaela Shiffrin had one of those days on Sunday, the kind her competitors on the World Cup have come to dread.
On a day when cold wind gusts and angry snow squalls raked Killington, Shiffrin won the first run convincingly, and then skied brilliantly on a brutal second course to distance herself further from her rivals.
Shiffrin, who was second in Saturday’s giant slalom to Germany’s Viktoria Rebensburg, picked up her first win of the season, and made it look almost easy.
She finished with a combined two-run time of 1 minute, 40.91 seconds, 1.64 seconds ahead of Petra Vlhova of Slovakia. Austria’s Bernadette Schild finished third in 1:43.58, a distant 2.67 seconds back.
Shiffrin also won the slalom at Killington last year, when the World Cup returned to Vermont for the first time since 1978.
Like the first run, the second run Sunday took place under gray skies, but it was noticeably colder and windier. And the course, hard and fast, was unforgiving. Seven of the 30 skiers failed to finish, including Switzerland’s Wendy Holder, who was closest to Shiffrin after the first run.
But Shiffrin had a dominant performance on a very tough hill.
She credited a blazing start in the first run for picking her up. “That start was the attitude I wanted to take into today,” she said, making a statement by the time she got to the first interval, which was just 10 seconds into the run. She skied that short span about a third of a second faster than anyone else.
Geisenberger wins another World Cup, Sweeney gets first gold
WINTERBERG, GERMANY » Natalie Geisenberger got another win, Emily Sweeney claimed her first gold medal and Erin Hamlin clinched another Olympic berth.
Geisenberger won the World Cup women’s singles race, holding off fellow German star Tatjana Heufner by about one-third of a second while Summer Britcher of the U.S. was third. Hamlin took fourth, which was enough for her to officially clinch her fourth trip to the Olympics in what will likely be her final season on a sled.
In the sprint race that followed, Sweeney got her first World Cup win, with Britcher second — her second medal of the day — to give the U.S. a gold-silver finish. Geisenberger took the bronze.
Hamlin is the fifth USA Luge athlete to make four Olympic teams, joining women’s racer Cameron Myler and doubles athletes Mark Grimmette, Brian Martin and Chris Thorpe. Grimmette was a five-time Olympian.
Geisenberger’s win was the 40th of her career in a World Cup singles event. Including the sprint bronze, she now has 81 World Cup singles medals and 105 World Cup medals overall, not including 15 medals that she’s collected at past Olympics and world championships.
Shibutanis cruise at Skate America for 2nd Grand Prix win
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. » American ice dancers Maia and Alex Shibutani skated into the Grand Prix Final with ease, winning Skate America on Sunday for their second victory in the series.
The two-time U.S. champions were a hit with fans and judges all weekend, twizzling and spinning their way to wins in the short and free dance programs. They won the free skate Sunday with a 115.07 and finished with 194.25 overall.
The siblings also won the Grand Prix event in Russia this year. They took bronze at last season’s Final, and they’ll try to do better next month in Japan.
Italy’s Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte also qualified for the Final with a score of 181.63. The duo was upset with the judges’ scores on the short program Saturday and then struggled in the free dance, with Cappellini’s skate getting caught on Lanotte’s pants during a lift.
Russia’s Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov were third at 176.53. Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier were fourth at 166.54, and Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker of the U.S. next at 163.53. The other American pair, Rachel and Michael Parsons, was ninth out of nine teams.