Mikaela Shiffrin took home the Slalom on Schlossberg, after yesterday's Giant Slalom, achieving her 64th career World Cup success and the 14th successive Slalom podium, becoming the first-ever skier to conquer this milestone. This happened on the eighth anniversary of her first World Cup podium at the same venue. In 2011, she ended the weekend on the slalom podium for the first time in her career, alongside childhood heroes Marlies Schild and Tina Maze. "Yesterday, it was like what I’ve been working for since Courchevel, since making the decision not to go to Val d’Isere, and trying to get a couple of days of rest and some really solid focus, high-intensity training", said Shiffrin. "It was all so I could come back in Lienz and be better. My entire career, since that race in Lienz, I have tried to be good enough, specifically in GS. It’s been a process and a bit of a love/hate relationship. So when I ski really good GS, it’s one of the greatest feelings ever. After Courchevel, I lost all of my confidence. It was a huge relief coming through the finish and knowing that the best skiing I could do was in fact good enough". "Slalom has been a bit of a different story in my career", she continued. "It’s a lot more solid and stable. I was more just psyched today. When I can feel the good skiing I want to be doing, it’s always really really satisfying to come into the finish and see that it worked out".
It has been again a battle through Mikaela and Petra Vhlova who ended behind her by 0.61 seconds. In the first heat, they were only 26 cents apart, but in the second run, the American charged an incredible performance that not even Petra has been able to face.
The season of new faces is not over, luckily, and this has been Michele Gisin turn who took the podium for the first time in Slalom in third.
Katharina Liensberger finished fourth by a blink of an eye behind Gisin in fourth risking to take home the second top-3 results in less than 24 hours.
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