Shiffrin ends 7th in Cortina downhill
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — American skier Mikaela Shiffrin’s pursuit of a record-breaking 83rd World Cup victory is still on hold.
Shiffrin finished seventh, 0.39 seconds behind Slovenian winner Ilka Stuhec in a downhill Saturday on the course that will be used for the 2026 MilanCortina Olympics.
Shiffrin therefore remained tied with former teammate Lindsey Vonn for the women’s record at 82 wins each.
Season-long downhill leader Sofia Goggia, who won Friday’s race in Cortina, fell midway through her run but avoided injury.
Shiffrin finished fourth in the first of two downhills in Cortina on Friday after a slight error. In this race, she didn’t appear to make any significant mistakes but just didn’t have enough speed in a discipline that is far from her best.
A super- G will complete the Cortina weekend on Sunday.
Stuhec, the 2017 and 2019 world champion in downhill, finished 0.26 ahead of Kajsa Vickhoff Lie and 0.34 ahead of Elena Curtoni.
Stuhec hadn’t won a World Cup race since December 2018.
The Olympia delle Tofane course was shortened due to wind, removing the course’s most characteristic section, the Tofana Schuss or “chute” between two walls of rock.
About a third of the course was eliminated.
Goggia lost control while landing a jump, got twisted around, slammed through a gate and slid down the mountain before quickly getting up and skiing down to the finish, where she waved to the crowd to say she was OK.
The safety air bag under Goggia’s racing suit inflated during her crash, which may have helped soften her landing.
“I really just made an error. It wasn’t a concentration lapse,” Goggia said. “It went well in that nothing happened.”
Goggia broke two fingers in her left hand during a downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, last month, then returned after a quick surgery to win another downhill a day later. She also crashed nastily in a super- G last weekend in St. Anton, Austria, but avoided injury.
“Blow after blow but tomorrow I’ll race,” Goggia said.
Austrian skier Nina Ortlieb also fell hard while landing a jump and ended up in the safety nets immediately before Goggia’s run.
Meanwhile, reigning world and Olympic champion Corinne Suter didn’t start after falling in Friday’s race. The Swiss team says the decision was a “precautionary” measure and that Suter was not injured but she “didn’t feel 100 percent.”
Men’s downhill:
Aleksander Aamodt Kilde turned around his Kitzbuehel weekend, winning the second men’s World Cup downhill on the demanding Streif course after overcoming two eventful days in the posh Austrian ski resort. The Norwegian fractured a bone in his right hand during Thursday’s training, then needed an acrobatic recovery in the race the next day to escape a fall near the end of his run, which he called “scary.” But racing under low clouds and in light snowfall on Saturday, he sped down the 3.3kilometer course with no apparent mistakes, winning the storied race for the second time in his career. “I’m super, super proud of what I did,” Kilde said. “We had to dig deep today to get it going. I was really happy with my run today.” Attended by 45,000 spectators, including high-profile guests from politics, society, and sport, the downhill on the Streif is the World Cup race with the highest prize money, paying $109,000 to the winner. American skiing great Lindsey Vonn was among the first to congratulate Kilde, even before the race was officially over as lower-ranked skiers were still coming down. Kilde was joined on the podium by two racers who have announced their retirement for after the season: Frenchman Johan Clarey finished 0.67 seconds back, and American Travis Ganong trailed by 0.95 in third.