KRANJSKA GORA, Slovenia (AP) — Swiss skier Camille Rast challenged Mikaela Shiffrin’s dominance in slalom for a second straight week Sunday, leading the American star by one-tenth of a second after the opening run of a race in Slovenia.
Shiffrin has won all five slaloms so far in the Olympic season but last week in Austria had to come back from half a second behind on a deteriorating course to edge out first-run leader Rast.
Racing in excellent conditions Sunday, Shiffrin charged down the Podkoren 3 course and gave herself a thumbs-up after finishing in 50.34 seconds, the fastest time by far until then.
But Rast, who is the slalom world champion, started a few minutes later and had the best split times in the last two sections to take the lead.
The rest of the field, led by Rast’s teammate Wendy Holdener in third and Shiffrin’s teammate Paula Moltzan in fourth, had more than three-quarters of a second to make up in the final leg. Austria's Katharina Truppe was the only other skier to finish less than a second off the pace.
Rast is after her fourth career win. On Saturday, she earned her maiden giant slalom win on the same hill and dedicated that victory to the victims of the fire at a bar in Crans-Montana near her hometown of Vétroz.
Shiffrin said she was impressed by her Swiss rival and by several other racers who posted fast split times.
“It’s been really impressive to see the women coming down, green light, like so many are doing such a good job,” Shiffrin said.
“They are finding speed and time somewhere in the course that I can’t imagine where. So, I love to see that, it’s like a really good show.”
If she wins, Shiffrin will match her personal best of seven straight World Cup slalom victories, having also won the final race of last season. The World Cup record is eight consecutive wins.
It would also mark Shiffrin’s record-extending 70th career win in slalom; no other skier, male or female, has ever won more than 46 World Cup races in a single discipline.
Defending slalom World Cup winner Zrinka Ljutic of Croatia didn’t finish her run for the fourth time in six races this season, and Italian prodigy Lara Colturi, competing for Albania, lost balance and fell on a course set by her father and coach, Alessandro Colturi.
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