Shiffrin third by scant hundredth of a second in Sestriere giant slalom

By a scant one one-hundredth of a second, Edwards’ Mikaela Shiffrin on Saturday just missed making it a three-way tie for first in World Cup giant slalom in Sestriere, Italy, won by Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova and Italy’s Federica Brignone.

Shiffrin, looking for her second straight GS win and the 12^th of her career, was sitting in fourth position after the first run, .42 seconds back. She turned in the fastest second-run time to finish third by the narrowest possible margin.

The shared win for the red-hot Vlhova – her third victory of the month after beating Shiffrin in two-straight slaloms – trimmed another 40 points off Shiffrin’s overall World Cup lead as she chases what would be an American record four straight overall titles.

Vlhova and Brignone picked up 100 points for the win, and Shiffrin earned 60 for third place. Shiffrin still leads the chase by 233 points over Vlhova. The two are tied with four victories each so far this season.

Shiffrin had won the last GS race, Dec. 28 in Lienz, Austria, and was looking to crack into the top 10 all time with her 12^th career win in the discipline.

Shiffrin has won 64 World Cup races in her career, second on the all-time women’s list behind former Vail resident Lindsey Vonn at 82.

After a single-season World Cup record 17 victories in 2018-19, Shiffrin has won four times so far in the 2019-20 season but not yet in the new year, including seeing her nearly year-long slalom victory streak end to Vlhova with back-to-back defeats.

“The most exciting thing for me is that people have stopped asking me, like, are you unbeatable?” Shiffrin said, according to NBC’s OlympicTalk. “I feel really good in GS. It’s just been a long time since [the last GS on Dec. 28].”

Next up is a parallel GS on Sunday in Sestriere, site of the 2006 Winter Olympics where Julia Mancuso won GS gold.