Swiss skier Lara Gut-Behrami came from far behind to win a Women’s World Cup giant slalom by one-hundredth of a second on Saturday, overtaking the absent Mikaela Shiffrin to lead the overall standings.
Gut-Behrami improved from ninth position after the opening run to beat New Zealand’s Alice Robinson. Shiffrin’s teammate AJ Hurt finished 0.15 behind in third place for the American’s first career podium in GS.
Gut-Behrami capitalized on a three-race winning streak to increase her season total to 1,214 points, five more than Shiffrin, who is sitting out this weekend’s races due to a left knee injury.
“Yes, but this is probably a month too early,” Gut-Behrami said with a smile as he regained the lead in the overall standings with 14 races to go until the season ended on March 23.
“For the overall World Cup, this season has shown us that you have to be fast and healthy. That will always be my top priority,” said Gut-Behrami, who also topped the standings after winning the season-opening race in Austria in October.
Many top skiers have been involved in serious crashes and suffered season-ending injuries recently, including Petra Vlhova, Valerie Grenier and Corinne Suter, and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, Alexis Pinturault and Marco Schwarz on the men’s circuit.
Shiffrin injured her knee but avoided ligament damage when she landed after a jump and crashed into the safety net during a descent in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, 15 days ago.
She will also skip Sunday’s slalom in Andorra as her return to racing is still unclear. Gut-Behrami does not compete in that discipline.
“I’m just so happy with the win. It was a tough race, I missed the first run completely, I couldn’t get up to speed,” said Gut-Behrami, who was 0.61 seconds behind in the morning session.
Marta Bassino led Federica Brignone for an Italian one-two in the opening point, but they dropped to sixth and fourth respectively.
Bassino was world junior GS champion 10 years ago. She won the World Cup title in the discipline in 2021, but has won just one World Cup competition in the last three years.
Most racers struggled and lost time on a bump in a right turn at the end of the course. Gut-Behrami did it too, but the rest of her run went pretty much without a hitch.
“The second run was good, I just attacked. I made a big mistake at the finish, so I’m very happy that it worked out in the end,” she said. “Everything I missed in the first run, I wanted to show in the second run. The course was fun, I enjoyed it.”
Hurt continued her breakthrough World Cup season with her second career podium and first in GS.
“I think I just tried as hard as I could. I thought: I’m going to go all the way, either I’m going to fall out, or I’m going to hopefully cross the finish line very quickly,” said the California native.
Hurt earned her first podium finish when she finished third in a slalom in Slovenia five weeks ago, and had two top-10 results in the GS before Saturday’s race.
American teammate Paula Moltzan finished 11th.