After finishing second in Kranjska Gora, Mikaela Shiffrin was back in winning form in the classic night slalom in Flachau. She finished ahead of her teammate Paula Moltzan and Katharina Truppe, who scored the first Austrian women’s slalom World Cup podium on home soil since 2024.
by Maciej Jackiewicz
First run
The first run of the women’s night race in Flachau started at 17:45 local time with Wendy Holdener’s appearance. Fresh off the podium in Kranjska Gora, she set the benchmark time of 57.02 seconds. Right after her, it was the home star Katharina Truppe, who beat the Swiss skier’s time by 0.45 seconds. It was a very good run, but it was not perfect. The ones that was able to beat the Austrian’s time were two Americans – first, Paula Moltzan by 0.16 seconds, and then the slalom World Cup leader Mikaela Shiffrin, who beat her compatriot by 0.19 seconds. This top three stayed unchanged for the rest of the run. The Kranjska Gora winner Camille Rast finished the run in fourth with a quite big 0.78-second gap to the leading American.
The course was very bumpy and with every run the situation got worse. A lot of experienced and talented athletes were not able to finish the Grießenkar course in Flachau. Most notably, after a career-best seventh position in Kranjska Gora, Dženifera Ģērmane of Latvia crashed in the first part of the course. Fortunately, nothing serious happened to the Latvian and her appearance at the Olympics is not at risk. Some other skiers who fell or missed their gate were the Swedish duo of Cornelia Öhlund and Hanna Aronsson Elfman, as well as the American duo of AJ Hurt and Elisabeth Bocock.
As mentioned earlier, the conditions were getting more difficult with every skier. With that, it comes as no surprise that there were not a lot of high-bib competitors that made their way into the second round. For the second slalom in a row, the highest bib that made the cut was Bib 71 Noa Szőllős, who after finishing 28th in Slovenia, concluded the first run in Flachau in 30th. It is even more impressive, as she started 71st out of 76 competitors, which meant she could not really imagine worse conditions for her run. Nonetheless, this was the second time an Israeli skier qualified for run two in Alpine Ski World Cup.
Second run
The first part of the Flachau competition was foggy, but it was nothing in comparison to the second run, where where dense fog made the skiers invisible in sections of the course. Noa Szőllős began the second run at 20:45 local time, but she did not score points as she missed a gate just before the finish line. With that, the first athlete to cross the finish line in this run was Aline Danioth, who was promptly replaced at the top by respectively Marion Chevrier and Aline Höpli. The latter led for a longer time, but was subsequently replaced at the top by Natalie Falch and Nina O’Brien, who was faster than Falch by over a second. Despite this gap, O’Brien did not go up that much, as firstly Lara Della Mea went 0.31 seconds faster, before Lara Colturi who was 17th after a disappointing first run snatched the lead by 0.66 seconds.
Colturi led for a very long time. Before the lead changed, we saw another crash of the competition, as Laurence St-Germain suffered a nasty-looking fall just after the finish line, but fortunately nothing serious happened to the Canadian. The first one to beat Colturi after her long time at the top was Sara Hector, who was eighth after the first run. The Swede went 0.31 seconds faster than the Albanian, but was quickly down to second after the run of Wendy Holdener, who was fifth after the first run. In the meantime, Emma Aicher did not finish her run, which was a shame for her as she was classified in good seventh position after run one.
Anna Swenn Larsson was next, but her time was not enough to beat the leading Swiss skier. Then, another chance of changing the lead arose with the run of Camille Rast. Indeed, Rast showed great skiing to beat her compatriot by 0.26 seconds. This was a serious attack on the podium, but the top three skiers were not easy to outpace. First was Katharina Truppe, who really wanted to score a podium in front of her home crowd. After a nail-biting run, she beat Rast by the skin of her teeth, just 0.02 seconds. It was the first Austrian women’s slalom podium on their home soil since Semmering in December 2024.
Next up was Paula Moltzan, who also rode very well, and in the end she finished 0.16 seconds faster than Truppe. But it was no match to Mikaela Shiffrin, who absolutely obliterated the field in Flachau. Her 0.19-second advantage from run one grew larger and larger with every intermediate and at the finish line it was 0.41 seconds. This was the 107th win in Shiffrin’s World Cup career, 70th in her crown discipline and a record-breaking sixth in Flachau. Her gap in the overall standings’ lead grew by 50 points and now equals 218 points. Wendy Holdener was able to overtake Lara Colturi for third, as the gap between them now sits at just a single point.
Results
| Session | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Full results |
| Slalom | Mikaela Shiffrin, 1:50.52 | Paula Moltzan, +0.41s | Katharina Truppe, +0.65s | Here |
What’s next?
There is only one slalom left in the women’s World Cup before the long-awaited Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina. On 25 January the skiers will compete in Špindlerův Mlýn, Czechia for the slalom crown, with the giant slalom competition taking place a day earlier. But we will have plenty of racing before, as from 17 to 18 January we will witness a downhill and Super-G in Tarvisio, Italy, with a giant slalom in Kronplatz, Italy coming on the 20 January.
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