Mikaela Shiffrin makes 90, Marta Rossetti fifth
Alpine skiing, results
An excellent fifth place for Marta Rossetti in the Killington slalom that saw host Mikaela Shiffrin take her 90th career victory. Author of the best time in both runs, the U.S. champion recorded her sixth success out of seven races held over the years in the Vermont resort that has seen her grow.
Shiffrin completed the race in 1’42”02 with a lead of 0”33 over Slovak Petra Vlhova – third at mid-race – and 1”37 over Swiss Wendy Holdener, who in the decisive downhill was able to find her way back to the podium at the expense of German Lena Dürr, who slipped from second to fourth place.
In short, there’è only the current slalom gotha ahead of Marta Rossetti. The Brescian of the Fiamme Oro – bib 32 – faced both heats of the U.S. course with aggressiveness, finding an adequate rhythm both in the more streamlined first fraction and in the second run, designed by the blue coach Roberto Lorenzi.
Thirteenth halfway through the race, the 24-year-old from Puegnago sul Garda made a valuable comeback right in the second run to move up eight places and deserve the best result of her career.
Before her fifth-place finish in Killington, she boasted as her best finish the 11th place in the Semmering slalom in December 2020, just days before the left knee injury the following January that would affect her subsequent seasons. An’azzurra in the top5 of a women’s slalom had been missing for more than six years, since Chiara Costazza’s fifth place in March 2017 in Squaw Valley, also on U.S. soil.
Also good was the performance of Lara Della Mea, 15th. The Friulian was ahead of Rossetti halfway through the race, but in the second fraction she was not able to juggle as well as she could, nevertheless grabbing her personal best World Cup placing, without, however, forgetting how Dalla Mea finished in eighth place in the rainbow event at the World Championships in Courchevel-Meribel 2023.
On the other hand, only five hundredths separated the youngest Beatrice Sola (32nd) from the first World Cup qualification, a goal also missed in the first run by Martina Peterlini (38th) and Anita Gulli (53rd).
With her success number ninety, Mikaela Shiffrin retains the lead in both the overall and slalom rankings.The women’s World Cup now remains in North America but moves to Canada. Two giant slaloms are scheduled for Saturday, December 2 and Sunday, December 3 in Tremblant, Quebec.
