KILLINGTON, Vermont — Switzerland’s Camille Rast won the women’s slalom in Killington, Vermont, for her first World Cup victory after pre-race favourite Mikaela Shiffrin was injured in a crash during the giant slalom.
Rast, who was third after the opening run and 0.12 seconds back of Germany’s Lena Duerr, finished with a combined time of one minute 46.87 seconds to beat Sweden’s Anna Swenn Larsson by 0.57 seconds. Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener finished third.
The win propelled Rast to the top of the slalom World Cup standings and overall World Cup standings.
“I don’t know what to say, it’s just really crazy in the moment and I am so happy about my skiing now,” said Rast according to Reuters.
“It’s just the beginning of the season and it’s already going so good and I have to continue like this.”
This was the second time that Swenn Larsson, 33, and Holdener, 31, have tied in a slalom race at Killington, sharing the win in 2022. Holdener was ninth after the first run and threw down the fastest second run to reach the podium. She described her mentality as “I grab my heart and ski.”
“I´m really happy that I could do it and send it down how they say it here, Sendy Wendy,” she added with a laugh according to AP.
It was the fifth time Holdener has finished on the podium in the Killington slalom and third time for Swenn Larsson.
“Now I have been first, second and third here, so I guess Killington is a favorite place for me,” Swenn Larsson.
Shiffrin, meanwhile, suffered a deep puncture wound on the right side of her abdomen and “severe muscle trauma” during her scary crash in a giant slalom race but no serious bone, ligament or organ damage.
The five-time overall World Cup champion was sidelined for the Killington Cup slalom race. There’s no timetable for her return to racing, the US Ski Team said in a statement sent out before the start of the slalom, which was won by Swiss skier Rast for her first career World Cup victory.
Shiffrin was leading after the first run of the GS as she chased after her 100th World Cup win. With the finish line in sight on her second run, the 29-year-old leaned into the hill, lost an edge and slid into a gate, flipping head over skis. She then slammed into another gate before coming to a stop in the protective fencing.
The banged-up Shiffrin stayed down on the side of the course for quite some time. She asked for a sled to take her down, because she “was in shock, entirely unable to move and worried about internal organ trauma,” Shiffrin said in a statement.
Transported by ambulance to a medical center, doctors who evaluated her determined she had no ligament damage and that her bones and internal organs “look OK,” according to the statement from the team.
The team added that Shiffrin suffered severe muscle trauma and a puncture wound on the right side of her abdomen. She did not receive stitches because the wound is “too deep and there is risk of infection,” Shiffrin explained.
Over her 14-year career, Shiffrin has rehabbed from two previous on-hill injuries: a torn medial collateral ligament and bone bruising in her right knee in December 2015 and a sprained MCL and tibiofibular ligament in her left knee after a downhill crash in January 2024. Neither knee injury required surgery, and both times, Shiffrin was back to racing within two months.
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