With a second slalom in the Czech resort on Sunday, 27-year-old Shiffrin has her first chance to equal Stenmark's record of 86 victories set in the 1970s and 1980s, a benchmark that American Lindsey Vonn had approached (82 victories) in the 2010s. A little wink in history, it is on the track of Spindleruv Mlyn, where she made her first start in the World Cup on March 11, 2011, that she can become Sunday the equal of Stenmark, almost twelve years later.
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On Saturday, the skier from Vail (Colorado) signed her eleventh victory of the 2023 season and is heading straight for a fifth big crystal globe, a reward awarded to the winner of the general classification of the World Cup.
She is 671 points ahead of her first pursuer, the Slovak Petra Vhlova, 12 races from the end of the season.
The women's record is currently owned by the Austrian Annemarie Moser-Pröll, with six large globes.
The four-time world champion in slalom (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019) arrived in the Czech Republic with two consecutive giant slalom victories at Kronplatz (Italy) on Tuesday and Wednesday.
With the slalom scheduled for Sunday, she will have competed in seven races in ten days.
For the first slalom contested at Spindleruv Mlyn, Shiffrin was the fastest in the first run, with a small lead over the German Lena Dürr (29/100) and Petra Vlhova (46/100), the others competitors showing more than a second behind the best time.
In the second run, on a track in perfect condition, she once again achieved the best time to finally beat the German Lena Dürr (+0.60) and the Swiss Wendy Holdener (+1.31).
“
I knew that if I took a little risk, there was a chance that I wouldn't finish the race.
I had to take my best curves to have a chance, because these women are so strong
,” Shiffrin commented after the race.
The only Frenchwoman qualified for the second round with the 27th time in the first round, Nastasia Noens took 26th place, three weeks before the slalom of the World Championships in Courchevel / Méribel (Savoie).
