Mikaela Shiffrin crushed the slalom run to win the Alpine Combined in Cortina 2021. Now she has already won world championships medals in the Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super-G, and Alpine Combined.
It made her the most-decorated American skier in World Championships history, with her ninth medal (six golds, one silver, two bronzes) moving her clear of Lindsey Vonn's eight total medals and Ted Ligety's five golds.
Only Christel Cranz (12), Marielle Goitschel (7), and Anja Pärson (7) have claimed more gold medals among women at the world championships than Shiffrin, now tied with Erika Hess with 6.
Until today the only US winner of the Women's Combination was Tamara McKinney in 1989.
“The conditions were perfect today, it was really fun to ski. I was also happy to get another run on this super-G course. (...) The slalom was a hard icy slope, not everyone had the best time with the conditions, but I just did what I could to keep building my speed despite slipping a little”, Shiffrin said.
Petra Vlhova was in the seventh position after the Super-G and her slalom run was good enough to beat Gisin but not to challenge Shiffrin today. She was silver also in the last championship held in Are in 2019.
Vlhova was happy to get on the podium today. “It’s a good way to kick off the tech week and always a relief to earn the first medal. The difference today was my super-G, which put me in a good position for the slalom run”.
Michelle Gisin finished in third position +0.89 behind Shiffrin. For Gisin it is the 2nd world championships medal after she had already won silver in the Alpine Combined in St. Moritz in 2017.
Only 16 skiers crossed the finish line. Those that tried to attack the course, fell victim to the course set at the top. Those that played it safe were well off the pace of the slalom aces. Following the top three, there was a massive gap in the time with fourth-place finisher Elena Curtoni ending a hefty 2.35 seconds behind Shiffrin.
