She’s beaten her nearest rival for most of the season, but US skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin came up short behind Petra Vlhova in the giant slalom at the World Championships in Sweden.
Shiffrin, the Olympic giant slalom champion, won world super-G gold in Are last week, but was 0.38 seconds adrift of the Slovakian and had to be content with GS bronze in windy, testing conditionsThursday.
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Shiffrin was fourth after the first run but could not make up the gap as Vlhova, 23, passed first-run leader Viktoria Rebensburg of Germany to clinch her first world championship gold.
“You dream about it, you work for it, but when it works, that’s another feeling entirely,” Shiffrin tweeted afterwards.
“It was a fight for everyone, with very tough conditions and a LOT of wind…it was one of those races where anything could happen and “luck” was changing directions almost as fast as the wind, so to come away from the evening with a medal— well, I think my face says it all (smiling).”
Vlhova has come closest to knocking Shiffrin off her pedestal in the World Cup this season, winning four times, but she has also finished runner-up to the American on six occasions. The pair even shared a victory with a dead heat in a giant slalom in Maribor, Slovenia earlier this month.
Shiffrin has won 13 times to build an almost impregnable lead in the World Cup overall standings, a crown she has won for the past two years.
She has also won the World Cup slalom crown for five of the last six years but has yet to win the World Cup giant slalom title.
The 23-year-old Shiffrin is targeting a fourth straight slalom world title Saturday.
