KILLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — Swiss skier Camille Rast earned her first career World Cup victory on Sunday in a slalom race that was wide open with Mikaela Shiffrin sitting out after a hard crash the day before in the giant slalom.
In third place after the first run, Rast powered down the tricky course to finish in a combined time of 1 minute, 46.87 seconds. Anna Swenn Larsson of Sweden and Wendy Holdener of Switzerland tied for second, each 0.57 seconds back. It was the first time in 28 years that two Swiss women finished on a World Cup podium together.
First-run leader Lena Duerr of Germany fell to fourth.
It was Rast’s second World Cup slalom podium in a week. The 25-year-old finished third in a slalom in Gurgl, Austria, last weekend. On Saturday, she earned her first World Cup giant slalom podium with a third-place finish in Killington.
“It’s really crazy,” Rast said. “I am so happy all the work that I did this summer is now working really, really good."
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 — or “Sendy Wendy” as she’s called here — 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.
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.
The Killington race was missing two of slalom’s biggest stars in Petra Vlhova of Slovakia and Shiffrin. Vlhova is still recovering from a crash and knee surgery last winter, while Shiffrin remains sidelined with a puncture wound to her abdomen and severe muscle trauma from Saturday’s crash.
There is no timetable for Shiffrin’s return to racing, the U.S. Ski Team said in a statement released before the slalom.
“It’s sad because she’s a frigging fast slalom skier,” Larsson said. “She should be here, but she’s not, and we took the opportunity.”
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Peggy Shinn, The Associated Press
