She’s knows as being the ‘slalom queen’, but Mikaela Shiffrin can now add Downhill to her growing list of achievements, winning her very first World Cup downhill victory in Lake Louise last Saturday!
Shiffrin scored a time of one minute 27.55 seconds, beating Germany’s Viktoria Rebesburg by 0.13 seconds, and Switzerland’s Michelle Gisin who came in third with a time of 1:27.72.
Shiffrin, who was the overall World Cup winner last season was competing in just her fourth World Cup downhill race, and of her 32 World Cup wins, 26 are her triumphs in slalom.
The start of the race was delayed by over an hour because of a power outage after a a power line to the Lake Louise resort failed, so the course was shortened for the race on Saturday.
“Shortening the distance was definitely an advantage to me because the top section is flat and I’m not as good up there”, Shiffrin told FIS Alpine Media.
“But from where we started most of the way down it’s fairly technical and I felt really good about that yesterday so I took even a little bit more risk today and it paid off, just barely. But I also had a really good lights and some of those other girls had fog and it was really dark.
I definitely know I was lucky today and yesterday, but I skied well and I took some risk and it was fun”.
“I wasn’t planning to win, but I was planning to come here, do my best and see what happened.”
Well that you did Mikaela! Winning her first World Cup downhill race proves she’s more than just the slalom queen!
Mikaela never fails to impress, also winning the ladies Giant Slalom held in Courchevel a couple of days ago!
Congrats Mikaela, we wish you the best of luck for the rest of the Cup!