Shiffrin vs Goggia: The race is on

LAKE LOUISE, Alberta — After getting the World Cup season off to a flying start Mikaela Shiffrin hit a bit of a speed bump in the Canadian Rockies while Italy’s Sofia Goggia stamped herself as skiing’s undisputed speed queen completing a Lake Louise hat-trick of victories.

In the first four races of the season Shiffrin was almost perfect collecting a pair of wins and coming home second in two others.

But those were technical events, slalom and giant slalom and all the momentum in the world was not enough to propel the 26-year-old double Olympic gold medallist, three-time World Cup overall champion onto the podium at this iconic Canadian resort.

Although Shiffrin is increasingly competitive in the speed events it is the technical races where she shines.

Of her 71 career wins only two have come in the downhill but one of those was in 2017 at Lake Louise where she also won a super-G the following season.

Limited to a handful of downhill training sessions by a back injury, Shiffrin admitted to disappointment with 26th and 38th place results in the downhill but salvaged the weekend with sixth in Sunday’s super-G.

“That confidence doesn’t really carry over they are such different events, slalom and speed should be completely different sports,” said Shiffrin, who is targeting multiple medals at the Beijing Olympics where she hopes to contest every discipline. “I felt good and it is really nice to know that I still have some connection with the super-G skis after no training. It is really positive to end the weekend like this.

“The last days were a bit disappointing but I really couldn’t expect more I had to just swallow my pride a bit, this is where I am and it’s a little frustrating. I’ve had enough races in my career that I felt some disappointment. 

“It is a lot easier to remember the disappointing feelings than this wonderful feeling. It’s good to bring things back.” 

With Shiffrin fighting for form it was left to Breezy Johnson to wave the American flag picking up a pair of second place finishes behind a ruthless Goggia, who did no just dominate the opening two downhills but annihilated the competition underscoring her status as the skier to beat at the Beijing Winter Games where the Italian will defend her Pyeongchang downhill crown.

Goggia surprised even herself in Friday’s downhill season opener crossing 1.47 second clear of the field recording one of largest margins of victory ever in a World Cup downhill.

She followed up with impressive effort on Saturday romping to a 0.84 win giving her six consecutive downhill victories, a run of stunning superiority that stretches back to last season.

But Goggia said the most satisfying win of the weekend was in Sunday’s super-G where she edged Swiss world champion Lara Gut-Behrami by a much narrower 0.11 seconds.

“I’m really happy today, this is the best victory for sure of these three days,” said Goggia “I just said to myself push and to do the lines I had seen in the inspection and create speed in the last part of the pitch.

“When I saw the green light today it was an explosion in my heart because I did really believe I could do this but until you see the green light you never know.

“Today was one of my best victories ever because I made a change from the downhill to the super-G.”

Few skiers have enjoyed such successful weeks at the Canadian resort, Goggia joining Lindsey Vonn (2015, 2012, 2011) and Germany’s Katja Seizinger as the only women to complete a Lake Louise sweep.

“It is never the place you are in, it is how you are inside of yourself how you approach a race,” offered Goggia. “I worked very much within myself to be very solid.

“It is unbelievable (six consecutive wins) but I am just going race-after-race, turn-after-turn so I am not looking at these kind of statistics.”

It was the type of performance that Goggia’s fellow skiers could only marvel, Shiffrin describing it was perfection.

“Sofia looked, I don’t know, perfect,” said Shiffrin, who sits top the overall standings with 405 points, ahead of Petra Vlhova on 340 .

“She was aggressive, all things in the right place, pretty perfect run. Just super cool to watch that right out of the gate the first downhill race of the season to watch somebody already doing that.”