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SESTRIERE, Italy (AP) — Federica Brignone overcame a recent illness to win the first World Cup giant slalom after taking gold at the Alpine skiing world championships on Friday, while Mikaela Shiffrin finished 25th in the American's first race in the discipline in nearly 12 weeks.
Brignone beat runner-up Alice Robinson of New Zealand by 0.40 seconds, eight days after they also finished 1-2 in the GS at the worlds. Robinson remained in the lead of the discipline standings.
“I am feeling better since yesterday and I knew it was possible to make two good runs,” the Italian said with a hoarse voice, adding she spent most of the past six days in bed.
“The first run I didn't ski so good on the first flat, the second run I tried to keep the rhythm more high before this flat part and just to arc every single turn. This was the only thing I was thinking," added Brignone, who was accompanied during the winner's ceremony by Italian great Alberto Tomba.
Shiffrin, who trailed by 2.89 seconds in 18th after the opening run, finished 4.65 seconds off the lead.
“Big step today was that ... I pushed out of the gate. That’s a big step from not racing at all,” Shiffrin said. “But sometimes, when you’re used to being in the position to fight for top 10s, top 5s, podiums, it doesn’t feel like such a big step as it actually is.”
The American holder of a record 99 World Cup wins hadn’t raced in giant slalom since suffering severe trauma to her oblique muscles and a deep puncture wound during a GS crash in Killington, Vermont in November.
“I do not yet feel entirely myself… but I do feel enough of myself to be here… and for now, that is enough,” Shiffrin posted on Instagram on the eve of Friday’s race.
Brignone and Robinson were far ahead of the rest, as Thea Louise Stjernesund came 1.57 seconds behind in third. The Norwegian missed a medal at the worlds when she finished one-hundredth of a second in fourth behind Paula Moltzan of the United States.
On Friday, Moltzan stood third after the opening run but dropped to sixth after she came wide in a left turn in her second run and had to brake.
With Nina O'Brien in eighth, AJ Hurt in 12th and Katie Hensien in 21st, three more Americans finished ahead of Shiffrin.
Defending overall champion Lara Gut-Behrami skied out off the course near the end of her first run and the Swiss star saw the gap to leader Brignone in the overall standings grow from 70 to 170 points.
At the worlds, Shiffrin paired with downhill world champion Breezy Johnson to win the team combined and finished fifth in the slalom, but sat out the giant slalom because of “PTSD-esque” fears.
“It’s a lot of thinking and I think the world will hear what I say and they say, ‘Stop thinking, just go for it, just ski, it doesn’t matter.’ But the fact is, there’s a strategy behind ski racing and it does matter,” Shiffrin said Friday.
Because of her injury absence, Shiffrin has dropped to 11th on the ranking list that determines the start order for World Cup GS races, losing her place among the top seven skiers who get the most favorable start numbers.
“For the rest of the season, my goal is sort of fighting for some points, so I can try to stay in the top 30 in GS, which is a very different position from the last many years when I was fighting for podiums. That’s not where I am right now, and that’s OK," said Shiffrin, who got bib No. 8 for Friday’s race, which was only her third giant slalom start in 13 months.
After hurting her left knee in a downhill crash in January 2024, she reduced her schedule to only racing in slaloms for the remainder of her 2023-24 campaign. This season, she finished fifth in the season-opening GS in Austria in October before the crash in Killington happened.
Shiffrin has won a women’s record 22 giant slaloms in her career and took the season discipline title in 2019 and 2023.
Friday’s race was a replacement for a GS that was canceled in Tremblant, Quebec, in December. Another GS is scheduled for Saturday, followed by a slalom the next day.
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