She did not disappoint. Favorite of the race, Mikaela Shiffrin won the giant slalom of the alpine skiing world championships, Thursday, February 16, in Méribel (Savoie). The American won ahead of the Italian Federica Brignone (silver medal, 12 hundredths) and the Norwegian Ragnhild Mowinckel (bronze medal, 22 hundredths). Well placed for the podium, 12 hundredths behind Shiffrin on the first track, the French Tessa Worley fell at the end of the second run.
At 27, Mikaela Shiffrin, who succeeds Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami in giant slalom, adds a seventh title and a 13th world medal, after silver in the super-G a week ago, to her huge record. She equals on the shelves of the Worlds the Frenchwoman Marielle Goitschel (seven times world champion in the 1960s), but remains at a good distance, however, from the 15 medals including 12 coronations of the German Christl Cranz before the war, another era.
The American also achieved the rare performance of winning gold in a fourth different discipline after slalom (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019), super-G (2019) and combined (2021).
Surprise departure of his trainer
Shiffrin has everything to become the big star of these Worlds. And nothing will deflect it from its trajectory. Not even her surprise announcement on Wednesday, in which she declared to separate at the end of the season from her historic coach, yet for more than seven years by her side and, somewhere, responsible for her many successes. Furious to learn of his dismissal during the Worlds, Mike Day immediately left the Savoyard station.
Imperturbable, the American has also been imperial on skis since the start of the season. At the end of January, she won her 85th World Cup victory in the slalom in Spindleruv Mlyn (Czech Republic), three points more than her compatriot Lindsey Vonn and only one less than the absolute record of Swede Ingemar Stenmark.
With eleven successes this winter, no one doubts his ability to erase this mythical mark by the end of the season in March in Soldeu (Andorra). The Vail skier has already put both hands on the big globe, as her lead (more than 700 points) in the general classification of the World Cup seems unrecoverable.
By then, Mikaela Shiffrin could add a new line to her track record in Savoie. The American will once again be the most serious candidate for the title of world champion in slalom, on Saturday February 18, in Méribel.
