CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (Reuters) – Mikaela Shiffrin’s reign as super-G world champion ended on Thursday but, 382 days after her last race in the discipline, the American was happy enough to add a bronze to the collection.
The medal — in a race without fans due to the COVID-19 pandemic — was her eighth in five world championships and equalled Lindsey Vonn’s record for the most won by an American at the biennial event.
“I’m super pleased. I had such a good feeling skiing the hill — I just loved it. It was just so much fun,” said the 25-year-old, a five times world championship gold medallist.
“It was just such a pleasure to ski and I’m really glad that we were able to race today and the wind wasn’t something crazy and now we’ve started.”
Thursday’s race was the first of the Cortina world championships after snow, wind and fog in the Italian Dolomites wiped out the first three days’ schedule.
Shiffrin, who took an extended break after her father died last year, had not raced super-G since she won in Bansko, Bulgaria, in January 2020 and had only a few days of training to prepare.
But for one costly mistake the double Olympic gold medallist would probably have stood on the top step of the podium and denied Swiss winner Lara Gut-Behrami her first title.
Instead she was 0.47 of a second off the pace.
“My tactics the whole course were quite aggressive,” said Shiffrin, who pushed a little too hard and overloaded the left ski.
“You take the risk and maybe make no mistakes. I took the risk today and I can be really proud of that. Having a medal is amazing. It’s been over a year since I received any so I’m good.”
Shiffrin, who has only competed in the technical disciplines so far this season, has the Alpine combined, giant slalom and slalom still to come.
She has won slalom gold in the last four championships and remains a favourite for a fifth.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Toby Davis)
