{"id":30395,"date":"2016-02-16T09:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T17:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/shiffrin-wins-wc-slalom-in-first-race-after-2-months-out\/"},"modified":"2016-02-16T09:00:29","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T17:00:29","slug":"shiffrin-wins-wc-slalom-in-first-race-after-2-months-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/shiffrin-wins-wc-slalom-in-first-race-after-2-months-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Shiffrin wins WC slalom in first race after 2 months out"},"content":{"rendered":"

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland \u2014<\/strong> Mikaela Shiffrin is definitely back.<\/p>\n

Two perfect runs saw the American win a women\u2019s World Cup slalom by almost a half-second on Monday in her first race after two months out with injury.<\/p>\n

Crossing the line smiling after her second run, Shiffrin turned to look at the timings board then put her head in her hands at the realization she had won.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came in blind a little bit,\u201d she said. \u201cI knew my training skiing was some of the best I was doing but I just wasn\u2019t sure. It was kind of close your eyes and go, see what happens at the end of the run.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know what to expect from the rest of the girls. I was just watching on television and wasn\u2019t sure of the pace. I could see it but it\u2019s different from being there.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Shiffrin\u2019s first race since tearing a ligament in her right knee in December. The Olympic and world slalom champion started skiing again only two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Shiffrin won two slaloms in Aspen, Colorado, and both by big margins, before the training mishap in Sweden. She has won her last six slaloms stretching back to last season.<\/p>\n

This was Shiffrin\u2019s 18th win on the circuit, moving her level with Tamara McKinney for the second-most wins by an American woman. She turns 21 next month.<\/p>\n

Leading after the first run, Shiffrin finished 0.45 seconds faster than Nastasia Noens of France and 0.50 ahead of Marie-Michele Gagnon of Canada as several of her rivals struggled in difficult conditions.<\/p>\n

Three of the top 10 after the first run did not finish: Michelle Gisin, Petra Vlhova and Erin Mielzynski. Lila Lapanja of the United States also skied out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a tough race, tough for all the girls,\u201d Shiffrin said. \u201cSome of the girls had really bad visibility. I had OK visibility, I was struggling to see but at least I could see a bit. I\u2019m relieved with the luck of having better visibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was at the top, looking at the start and I was thinking, \u2018Oh it doesn\u2019t look too bad.\u2019 Then I closed my eyes for about a minute, visualizing the course, and then when I opened them again I was like, \u2018Hey, where did the slope go?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

World Cup slalom leader Frida Hansdotter finished sixth, 5.89 behind Shiffrin. The Swede has 545 points, 99 more than second-best Veronika Velez-Zuzulova of Slovakia, who was 10th.<\/p>\n

Shiffrin, who has won the past three titles, is 245 points behind Hansdotter. There are only two slalom races left along with a parallel event this month in Stockholm that counts in the slalom standings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe slalom globe\u2019s out. I\u2019m going to focus on GS a little bit now, try to see how quickly I can get back, see how many points I can get overall,\u201d Shiffrin said.<\/p>\n

Shiffrin is targeting the super G and super combined in Soldeu at the end of the month, but added, \u201cThat depends how training goes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CRANS-MONTANA, Switzerland \u2014 Mikaela Shiffrin is definitely back. Two perfect runs saw the American win a women\u2019s World Cup slalom by almost a half-second on Monday in her first race after two months out with injury. Crossing the line smiling after her second run, Shiffrin turned to look at the timings board then put her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30395"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}