American wins third gold overall and first since 2018
Shiffrin over a second ahead of Rast in silver spot
With one last chance to break an Olympic hoodoo stretching back a remarkable eight years, Mikaela Shiffrin delivered in style. The 30-year-old American surged to victory in the women’s slalom on a sun-splashed Wednesday in the Dolomites with a two-run time of 1min 39.10sec, becoming the first US skier to win three Olympic gold medals.
Switzerland’s Camille Rast, the reigning world champion and only woman to have beaten Shiffrin in her signature discipline this season, came in a yawning 1.50sec behind for the silver – the largest winning margin in any Olympic alpine skiing event since 1998 – while Anna Swenn Larsson of Sweden took the bronze. After fourth-placed Wendy Holdener of Switzerland, the rest of the field trailed by at least two seconds in the final race of the alpine skiing program of the Milano Cortina Games.
Wearing the No 7 bib, Shiffrin overcame a split-second wobble during her opening run when she clipped a gate midway down the course, but she regained her rhythm immediately and pumped her first after crossing in 47.13sec, a huge 0.82sec ahead of Germany’s Lena Duerr and the largest first-run lead in an Olympic women’s slalom in 66 years. No one else came within a second of Shiffrin’s time.
