Shiffrin’s bid for 6th home snow win gets off to a good start

KILLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – Overall World Cup champion Mikaela Shiffrin of the United States was fastest in the first run of a slalom on Sunday as she remained on course for a third consecutive victory in the discipline and a sixth on snow at home.

Cheered on by a cheering crowd, Shiffrin clocked 52.29 seconds on the Killington, Vermont course to take a 0.21 lead over Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener, who is trying to end a long wait for a first victory in slalom.

Austria’s Katharina Liensberger was third, just a hundredth of a second behind, while Olympic champion and last season’s slalom World Cup winner Petra Vlhová was 0.31 slower than Shiffrin.

While Shiffrin hails from Vail, Colorado, she can almost consider Killington a hometown race as she honed her skills nearby at Burke Mountain Academy as a teenager.

Shiffrin, who has won all five World Cup slaloms held there, won the two season-opening slalom races last weekend.

It would be a 50th slalom win for Shiffrin. No other skier has won more titles in a single competition than the 27-year-old skier.

By contrast, Holdener is still looking for his first slalom win after finishing on the podium 30 times. This is the highest number of World Cup podiums without a win in the discipline.

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