Ski star Mikaela Shiffrin won the first downhill run of the season, and young Emma Aicher, like Kira Weidle, surprisingly achieved a top ten place.
The American Shiffrin won in St. Moritz on Saturday with a lead of just 0.15 seconds over the Italian Sofia Goggia, who has won the overall downhill World Cup in each of the past three years. Goggia’s teammate Federica Brignone was also third, just 0.17 seconds behind Shiffrin. The German hopeful Weidle took ninth place, Aicher unexpectedly advanced to sixth place.
For Shiffrin, whose greatest strengths lie in the technical disciplines, it was the 91st World Cup victory of her career and the fourth in the downhill.
Strong race from Weidle and Aiche
Weidle presented herself stronger in her flagship discipline than in the Super-G, in which she only finished 26th on Friday. “It’s not quite where I want to be yet,” said the 2021 World Cup runner-up on ARD. “But after yesterday it’s quite alright.” The Starnberg resident explained that she tried to forget the disappointing day before and start over.
Teammate Aicher was beaming from ear to ear. The 20-year-old, whose strongest discipline is slalom, achieved her second-best World Cup result. “I hope it continues in that direction,” she said. After 35 starters, the race was ended due to increasingly poor visibility in the upper section of the route.
There is another Super-G in Switzerland on Sunday (10.30 a.m./ARD and Eurosport).
