Vail’s Mikaela Shiffrin wins super-G title; breaks 2,000 points

Tie goes to the runner, right?

Ironically, in her “worst” super-G performance of the season, tying for fourth with Austria’s Nicole Schmidhofer during Thursday’s World Cup finals in Soldeu, Andorra, Vail’s Mikaela Shiffrin iced the first World Cup super-G title of her career.

That’s pretty impressive given, that the now 24-year-old Shiffrin — her birthday was Wednesday — only competed in four World Cup super-Gs all season.

Shiffrin won three super-G starts ( Lake Louise, Alberta, St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Cortina Italy) and a tie for fourth with Schmidhofer gives the American 350 points on the season to the Austrian’s 303 and Lichtenstein’s Tina Weirather (268). That’s World Cup title No. 3 this season for Shiffrin, who’s already clinched the overall and slalom titles, going into this season.

Germany’s Viktoria Rebensburg won Thursday’s super-G in Andorra with a time of 1 minute, 23.91 seconds, ahead of Austria’s Tamara Tippler (15-hundredths of a second behind) and Italy’s Federica Brignone (34-hundredths back). But for Shiffrin, the key was to stay ahead of Schmidhofer and Weirather in Thursday’s race to win the globe. The tie with Schmidhofer was as good as a win and Weirather was a DNF.

“It’s special because I really never thought I could be in this position this season already in super-G,” Shiffrin said to The Associated Press. “… The way that everybody came together and made this work was just amazing. We are all so proud and everybody feels some ownership of this. … I’ve dreamed about someday, maybe, being able to win a globe in super-G but I really wasn’t expecting it this season.”

Yes, Shiffrin best known for her technical skills in the slalom and giant slalom has branched out into speed (downhill and super-G) during the last two seasons, winning a downhill in Lake Louise on Dec. 2, 2017, and completing the cycle of World Cup wins with a super-G triumph (Dec. 2, 2018) in Alberta to start the 2018-19 season, but no one thought she would ascend to this status this quickly.

While she did win the FIS Alpine World Ski Championship in super-G last month in Are, Sweden — worlds do not count toward World Cup points — she made it clear throughout the season that winning the speed discipline’s season title wasn’t necessarily a goal for the campaign.

Having felt that she overextended herself last season in the run up to the 2018 Olympics and initially attempting to compete in all five events (downhill, super-G, combined, giant slalom and slalom), Shiffrin was committed to keeping a schedule that kept her at her best physical and mental levels throughout the grinding season.

“I did think about it for a split second and then I tried to reel my brain back down to earth,” she said of altering her schedule to add more super-G races in a conference call with reporters on Jan. 24. “The super-G title was not one of the goals that I had set for this season, and I try to be really careful about not overshooting or changing my plans like crazy in the middle of the season. That might sound kind of stubborn because for sure I’m in an amazing spot in super-G right now, but I think it would add one too many things to the plate and could potentially kind of ruin all of my other goals.”

However, she might have gotten a break with the schedule as weather wiped out a pair of super-G races two weeks ago in Russia leaving her remaining atop the super-G standings.

This story will be updated.

via:: Vail Daily