Alpine Skiing - FIS Alpine Ski World Cup - Women's Giant Slalom - Soelden, Austria - October 28, 2023 Switzerland's Lara Gut-Behrami celebrates on the podium with teammates after winning the women's giant slalom REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
SOELDEN, Austria (Reuters) -Switzerland's Lara Gut-Behrami narrowly won the women's giant slalom, edging out Italy's Federica Brignone, while the favourite, U.S. Mikaela Shiffrin, finished sixth at the opening event of the 2022-23 World Cup season in Soelden on Saturday.
The race could hardly have been closer in sunny conditions in the Austrian Alps as Gut-Behrami was only two hundredths of a second faster than Brignone with a total time of two minutes and 18.94 seconds.
Gut-Behrami had a mediocre first run, finishing in fourth place, but she beat the entire field in her second run, when she was 0.75 faster than Brignone.
"It was the first time to me to start the season as the first one starting. And I paid for that a little bit in the first run," Gut-Behrami said. "The second run, I felt again that everything was normal and I could do what I wanted."
Petra Vlhova from Slovakia came third in both legs and third overall, 0.14 behind Gut-Behrami.
For Shiffrin, it was not the best day, as she finished 1.40 seconds behind Gut-Behrami, struggling to keep up the pace in the middle parts of the course.
"A little messy in some spots, but I liked my mentality going into the second run better," Shiffrin said. "A little bit more trying for race mode - I was just not able to execute perfectly."
(Reporting by Tommy Lund in Gdansk, additional reporting by Aadi Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
