The first race of the 2023-2024 Ski World Cup season was won by Lara Gut-Behrami on Saturday in Sölden, Austria. The Swiss, double world champion in 2021, won during the giant, beating the Italian Federica Brignone, second by two hundredths of a second, and the Slovakian Petra Vlhova, third by fourteen hundredths of a second.
Gut-Behrami was ranked fourth at the end of the first round. At 32, she signed her thirty-eighth World Cup victory and her third in Sölden, where she had already won in 2013 and 2016.
The American star, Mikaela Shiffrin, five-time winner of the general classification of the World Cup – as well as the small giant slalom globe last season – and victorious in the last race held in Sölden, in 2021 (the women’s events had been canceled in 2022), finished in sixth place.
The only Frenchwoman entered, Clara Direz, last qualified at the end of the first round, made a good comeback to climb to twentieth place. She posted an encouraging fourth best time in the second round.
“It’s always been an ordeal for me here [in Sölden] and for once it’s going really well and I’m happy. I’m leaving with good things, it kicks off the season,” she reacted at the end of her race.
