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Mikaela Shiffrin moved closer to a sixth career World Cup overall title on Sunday after a rare start in the super-G, a race her closest rival Emma Aicher did not finish.
Shiffrin placed 23rd in the race won by 35-year-old Elena Curtoni, who would have set a series of World Cup age records for women but for the recent comeback of 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn.
A stellar race for the home Italian team also saw unheralded 29-year-old Asja Zenere take a shocking third place wearing the low-ranked start bib No 33.
In just her second start in a super-G in more than two years, Shiffrin wore the No 31 bib. She started a half-hour after Aicher surprisingly skied out in the middle of a fast run that was set to see her take the lead.
Shiffrin earned just eight World Cup points from Sunday’s race but they helped her extend her lead over Aicher to 125 with six races left this season, including two in the slalom discipline she has dominated. Shiffrin is also the Olympic slalom champion. Aicher is an all-event racer, which is unusual in modern Alpine skiing, though she rarely scores top-10 results in giant slalom.
Curtoni completed an unexpected sweep of the three-race weekend for the home team in the sun-splashed Dolomites. Laura Pirovano won both downhills by just 0.01 seconds and looked a little fatigued on Sunday when placing eighth in the super-G, 0.46 back.
“Seeing Laura being at the top the last two days, it was charging me,” said Curtoni, who has been waiting since 2022 to get a fourth career World Cup win. “It was a roller coaster, I knew I was not done.”
At 35, Curtoni is the oldest winner of a women’s World Cup super-G, and only Vonn was older when winning any World Cup race. Vonn’s last victory was a downhill in January.
