After Gurgl, the next Women's Alpine Ski World Cup Slalom will take place on Sunday, December 1st on the Superstar slope in Killington, Vermont. The Stifel Killington Cup has been a regular stop on the Women’s Alpine Ski World Cup Calendar since 2016.
Mikaela Shiffrin took another dominant Slalom victory in Gurgl last Saturday - her second of the season and sixth in a row. The American claimed her 99th Alpine Ski World Cup victory, 62nd in Slalom, at the Women’s premiere in Gurgl. Shiffrin was accompanied on the podium by two new faces, Lara Colturi and Camille Rast, second and third respectively.
Mikaela Shiffrin (two wins), Lena Dürr (3rd and 5th), and Camille Rast (5th and 3rd) are the three women to have finished in the top five in both the Levi and Gurgl World Cup slaloms this season.
In Gurgl, Mikaela Shiffrin confirmed her status as the unrivaled Slalom favorite with a dominant victory to claim her 99th Alpine Skiing World Cup win. Of her impressive 99 World Cup victories, 62 have come in Slalom. Shiffrin can win her third World Cup Slalom of the 2024-2025 season. It would be the 11th winter season in which she has won three or more Slalom races.
It isn't easy to see anyone challenging the American ace without the presence of Petra Vlhova. Until last season Vlhova's injury in Jasna, Mikaela Shiffrin, and Petra Vlhová had recorded a 1-2 finish in 24 Alpine Ski World Cup Slalom events. Shiffrin finished ahead of Vlhová 14 times, and it was the other way around 10 times.
Since the start of the 2022-2023 season, Mikaela Shiffrin (15), Petra Vlhová (5), Wendy Holdener (2), Anna Swenn Larsson (2), and Lena Dürr (1) were the five women to claim a World Cup Slalom victory.
Since the start of the 2012-2013 winter season, Mikaela Shiffrin has recorded only five DNFs in 103 Alpine Ski World Cup Slalom starts: at Semmering in 2012, Zagreb in 2017, Lenzerheide in 2018 and Kranjska Gora in 2022 and 2024.
Mikaela Shiffrin has won 8 Slalom Crystal Globes (2012-2013, 2013-2014, 2014-2015, 2016-2017, 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024), tying her with Lindsey Vonn (Downhill) and Ingemar Stenmark (Slalom and Giant Slalom), who also hold eight discipline globes. Marcel Hirscher won the Men's Overall World Cup Crystal Globe eight times. Shiffrin has won 16 Crystal Globes (5 Overall, 8 in Slalom, 2 in Giant Slalom, and 1 in Super-G).
The 29-year-old US skier won seven (Levi, Killington, Lienz, Flachau, Jasna, Åre, and Saalbach) of the 11 Women's World Cup Slalom events last season. She only claimed more World Cup Slalom wins in the 2018-2019 winter season when she won 8 races.
Last season, Mikaela Shiffrin won the Slalom in Killington for the sixth time (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2023). Six out of seven. That is the number of victories in Mikaela Shiffrin's seven appearances at the Killington Slalom. After fifth place in 2022, the 29-year-old American skier won the Slalom in Killington last season with a lead of 0.33 seconds over Petra Vlhova and +1.37 ahead of Wendy Holdener.
Only in Levi (8) has Shiffrin celebrated more World Cup slalom victories than in Killington (6, also in Åre).
Mikaela Shiffrin is now just one victory away from the "hundred" milestone. In Killington, she will have the chance to reach the 100th mark in the Giant Slalom and Slalom races on Saturday and Sunday.
Lara Colturi finished second in Gurgl, just 0.55 seconds behind Shiffrin. The 18-year-old Albanian skier, who worked her way up from 4th to 2nd place, secured her first podium finish in the World Cup. Before Gurgl, the best World Cup result for Lara Colturi, daughter of Olympic champion Daniela Ceccarelli, was ninth place in the Night Slalom in Flachau last season. She is the first skier from Albania to climb onto the World Cup podium.
Camille Rast finished third in Gurgl, 0.57 seconds behind Shiffrin, to claim her first Alpine World Cup podium. With a fifth-place finish at the slalom opener in Levi and three top-five slalom finishes last season, the 25-year-old Rast has confirmed her status as one of the women to watch this season.
Wendy Holdener made her slalom comeback in Levi. She finished 16th. In Gurgl, the 31-year-old Swiss finished in fourth place, just 0.18 seconds off the podium.
She is tied-seventh in the all-time World Cup Slalom podium finishers, alongside Janica Kostelic and Pernilla Wiberg (all 35). Perrine Pelen (36) is next on the list. Only Frida Hansdotter (17) finished runner-up as many times in World Cup slalom events as Holdener (16).
After a promising start to the 2023-2024 season, including a third place in the Killington Slalom, Holdener suffered a fracture of her left ankle in a training fall in mid-December 2023. She had to undergo surgery and had to put to an end her season.
Holdener finished third in the Slalom standings in 2016, 2017, and 2019; and second in 2018 and 2023.
In seven slalom races at Killington, Wendy Holdener has finished on the podium four times, including one victory and three third places (2016, 2021, and 2023). Holdener and Swenn-Larsson shared first place in Killington on 27 November 2022.
Katharina Liensberger finished in second place in the Slalom opener in Levi. In Gurgl, she posted the third-best time in the first run but made a few mistakes in the second run and dropped to seventh place.
Liensberger has won three World Cup slalom races and finished on the podium 15 times. The four Austrian women to have claimed more than three World Cup Slalom victories are Marlies Schild (35), Roswitha Steiner (8), Gertrud Gabl (5), and Nicole Hosp (5). In the absence of Petra Vlhova, Katharina Liensberger is the only woman other than Shiffrin to have won more than two World Cup slalom races in her career.
Katharina Liensberger won the Slalom Crystal Globe in 2021.
Liensberger took silver in the Slalom behind gold medallist Petra Vlhova at the Beijing Olympic Winter Games.
In Cortina 2020, Liensberger posted the fastest times in both slalom runs, finishing well ahead of Petra Vhlova and Mikaela Shiffrin to take the gold medal. She was the first Austrian woman to reach the world championship podium in the Slalom since Michaela Kirchgasser (silver) in 2013. The last Austrian to win the Women's slalom world title was Marlies Schild in 2011.
In Killington, Liensberger has never reached the podium. Her best result was fourth place in 2021. In her last two appearances at the Vermont ski resort, she did not finish.
With a third place in the first slalom of the winter, on her favorite slope, Lena Dürr had a perfect start to the season. In Gurgl, she finished in fifth place.
Dürr finished second in the 2024 Slalom standings. Last season she enjoyed the best season of his career, with four podiums in her first six races (second and third in Levi, second in Lienz, and second again in Kranjska Gora). She has twelve individual World Cup podiums to her name, all in slalom.
In Gurgl, she will be aiming for her second Slalom World Cup victory after her win in Špindleruv Mlýn on 29 January 2023.
Dürr never managed to podium at Killington. Her best result was a fourth-place finish last season.
Zrinka Ljutic finished third behind Shiffrin and Dürr in the first run in Levi, but struggled on the steepest part of the course in the second run, losing time and finishing sixth. In Gurgl, she struggled on the icy slope in the first run and finished 24th, but posted the fastest time in the second run to move up to 9th.
Last season, the 20-year-old Croatian talent finished runner-up in three of the last four Women's World Cup slalom events in Jasná, Soldeu, and Åre. In Saalbach, she did not finish the second run after setting the third-best time in the first run.
Ljutic became the first woman to finish second in three consecutive World Cup slaloms since Mikaela Shiffrin had a run of four second-place finishes from March to November 2020. Ljutic, 20, can become the youngest woman to win a World Cup slalom since Shiffrin, then 20, won in Jasná in March 2016. Janica Kostelic is the only woman representing Croatia to have won World Cup events. Kostelic clinched 30 World Cup victories, including 20 in the Slalom.
In 2023, Zrinka Ljutic (3rd in Špindlerův Mlýn) and Leona Popovic (2nd in Soldeu) recorded Croatia's first Slalom podiums in the Women's World Cup since Ana Jelusic in 2007. Last season Popovic also had come very close to Croatia's first World Cup victory on the Women's side since 2006. Popovic finished runner-up in the second Levi Slalom on 12 November 2023.
Anna Swenn Larsson finished on the podium three times last season, including a win in Soldeu in February, her second World Cup victory. The Swede has twelve slalom World Cup podiums to her name.
Swenn-Larsson was the silver medallist behind Mikaela Shiffrin in the Slalom at the 2019 World Championships in Åre.
In Gurgl, she struggled on the icy slope in the first run and finished 27th, but posted the second-fastest time in the second run to move up to 15th.
Swenn-Larsson shared first place with Wendy Holdener at Killington on 27 November 2022. In 2019, she finished on the podium in third place behind Mikaela Shiffrin and Petra Vlhova.
Laurence St-Germain is the reigning women's slalom world champion. She was joined on the podium in Méribel by Mikaela Shiffrin (silver) and Lena Dürr (bronze). Remarkably, St-Germain's best result in an Alpine Ski World Cup slalom is fifth place in Åre on 11 March 2023, three weeks after becoming World Champion.
She finished in 14th place at Killington last season.
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