WORLD CUP SKIING: EagleVail star Mikaela Shiffrin clinches her second overall championship.
Youngest American with multiple Cup championships
Mikaela Shiffrin became the fourth American to win multiple World Cup overall titles Friday and the youngest to claim a second title, finishing third in a giant slalom at Ofterschwang, Germany, her first race since the PyeongChang Olympics.
Shiffrin turns 23 on Tuesday. Phil Mahre was 24 when he won the second of his three overall titles in 1982 and Lindsey Vonn was 24 when she won the second of her four in 2009. Bode Miller was 30 when he won his second World Cup title in 2008.
Shiffrin clinched with five races remain- ing. The World Cup finals will be held next week in Are, Sweden, where Shiffrin is apt to skip the downhill and super-G but race the slalom and GS.
“For sure it was something I thought about before these races, that it would be incredible to (clinch), but when I was racing today it wasn’t my focus or my goal,” Shiffrin said of the overall in the postrace news conference. “I really wanted to have a good GS race, and to be on the podium again is great.”
It was a less than satisfying day for the Olympic giant slalom champion, however. One of her goals this season was to win the World Cup GS title, and she went into the race trailing Germany’s Viktoria Rebensburg by 81 points. By finishing second in Friday’s race, Rebensburg pulled out of Shiffrin’s reach. Only Tessa Worley of France has a mathematical chance to overtake Rebensburg.
Shiffrin had the fourth-fastest first run Friday and skied onto the podium with a solid but not spectacular second run. Ragnhild Mowinckel of Norway claimed the win, 0.74 of a second faster than Shiffrin.
“It was a good second run,” Shiffrin said. “I felt a bit more clean than the first run. I had some mistakes in the first run. Overall I felt my skiing was pretty good, but for sure in the second run I also had the thought in my mind that I didn’t want to throw everything away (crash). I wanted to fight, but when I got to the final pitch I was thinking, ‘OK, don’t do something stupid.’ Which, unfortunately for me, is always a thought: to ski fast, but ski fast to the finish. It’s not always good enough to win in that case.”