In the end it turned out to be a Winter Olympics for the record books. U.S. athletes arrived in Italy facing protests and questions about their nation's politics. In early competition, some of the biggest U.S. stars stumbled in dramatic fashion on the snow and ice. But when the spotlight shifted to the closing ceremony in Verona, the U.S. had scooped up 12 gold medals its best tally ever in a Winter Games with 33 medals overall. That trails only winter sport superpower Norway.
Mikaela Shiffrin completed another dominant night in Flachau on Tuesday, winning a World Cup slalom to extend her season-long stranglehold on the discipline while leading an American one-two finish with teammate Paula Moltzan. Shiffrin followed up her fastest opening run with a composed second run to finish 0.41sec clear of Moltzan, claiming her sixth victory in seven slalom races this season.
Settting the pace on run 1 was Germany's Lena Dürr with a time of 50.93 seconds. Dürr was promptly pipped by Camille Rast im bib 2 by 0.33 seconds before Mikaela Shiffrin in bib 7 stormed ahead into the lead, a staggering 0.83 seconds ahead of Rast. The American attacked the course with her trademark precision and aggression, managing the steep terrain and rhythm changes better than anyone else in the field.
"In case of a SL, GS, (AC if 1st run = SL) event, competitors 1 to 15 on the board are obligated to meet at a certain time for the public draw. [...] If competitors do not check-in in person for a public draw by their defined show up time specified by FIS on the official daily program, without an official excuse, a sanction of CHF 999.-may be pronounced. In case of recurrence, this sanction may be increased to CHF 5'000.-."
The Colorado course is hosting men's World Cup races for just the second time, after 1975-76, and it was the stage for another strong run by Odermatt, who still needed to make up time in the final section to overhaul Vincent Kriechmayr and win by 0.08 seconds. It denied Austria a clean sweep, with Raphael Haaser a further 0.05 back in third and Stefan Babinsky in finishing fourth.
