American skier Mikaela Shiffrin has confirmed in Špindlerův Mlýn that she is the queen of this World Cup season and won the slalom. The already certain leader of the total World Cup ranking and of the event dominated the first round and in the second she sailed to her fifteenth victory of the season.
The second place was taken by the Swiss skier, Wendy Holdener, who lost 85 hundredths of a second on the winner. The third, Petra Vlhová from Slovakia, who won the giant slalom on Friday, was two seconds behind the winner. Gabriela Capová, Czech Republic, came fifteenth and improved her personal World Cup maximum.
The ecstatic atmosphere created by ten thousand fans made the skiers do their best although the first round was made difficult by snowfall. The one who coped with the conditions best was Shiffrin, who wanted to celebrate another victory in the same place where her career started eight years ago. In the first round she was the fastest and had the best split times, while in the second she was defeated by Katharina Truppe, who moved from the 16th to the 4th place, but there was no doubt that Shiffrin would finish first.
The 23-year-old American has won her ninth out of the eleven World Cup slalom races of the season, including parallel slaloms, she has only been defeated twice by Vlhová and came second today. So far she has only lost 40 out of the total 1,100 points. Overall, Shiffrin and Vlhová have won the last 19 slaloms.
Two Czech racers also did very well. Gabriela Capová had the 19th best time in the first round. Towards the end of the second round she lost a bit of speed but as a result of her rivals’ mistakes she came 15th. This is her best result in her World Cup career. So far, her maximum was the nineteenth place in the last year’s slaloms in Killington and Kranjska Gora.
“The fans were amazing and I’d like to thank them a lot for coming to support us,” says Capová. “I am glad that I improved my maximum although at the end I had ran out of energy,” she adds.
After more than a year Martina Dubovská gained her first points, having finished 23rd. The last time she was among the top 30 was last January in Zagreb. The third Czech racer, Klára Pospíšilová, didn’t finish the first round during her World Cup debut today.