Shiffrin builds upon WC lead in Killington

KILLINGTON, Vt. — Mikaela Shiffrin had one of those days yesterday, 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, the American 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 tworun 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.

Shiffrin now leads the overall World Cup standings with 305 points. With a win and a second-place finish each, Shiffrin and Vlhova are tied for the slalom points lead.

“This was even sweeter than last year,” Shiffrin said, noting that in 2016 she was “almost incapacitated by nerves” to be competing in Vermont. While she lives now in Colorado, she has family ties to Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire, and spent some of her formative years skiing at Burke Mountain Academy.

The race drew about 16,000 people, nearly as many as Saturday, when organizers reported 18,000 attendees, the most for a women’s World Cup race.