Shiffrin Sixth in Soelden GS

SOELDEN, Austria (Oct. 26) - Slalom World Champion Mikaela Shiffrin (Eagle-Vail, CO) skied into sixth place in the Soelden giant slalom to kick off the 2014 Audi FIS Alpine World Cup Season. Shiffrin led the U.S. women in the season opener and snagged her career-best World Cup giant slalom result. Switzerland’s Lara Gut sealed her first World Cup GS victory despite a huge mistake on the steeps. Tomorrow Ted Ligety (Park City, UT) will be gunning for his third-straight win in Soelden while Bode Miller (Franconia, NH) returns to the snow for the first time since February 2012. Universal Sports Network will provide live coverage starting at 7:30 a.m. EDT.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Slalom World Champion Mikaela Shiffrin (Eagle-Vail, CO) skied into sixth place in the Soelden giant slalom to kick off the 2014 Audi FIS Alpine World Cup Season on Saturday.
• Shiffrin led the U.S. women in the season opener and snagged her career-best World Cup giant slalom result, matching her sixth-place finish in World Championships GS. Her previous best World Cup GS finish was eighth.
• Switzerland’s Lara Gut put on an impressive show and sealed her first World Cup GS victory, winning by a .84 second margin despite a huge mistake on the steeps.
• Olympic giant slalom Champion Julia Mancuso (Squaw Valley, CA) finished 27th.
• Shiffrin and Mancuso were the only U.S. women to ski the final run.
• Shiffrin produced a fearless first run and sat fifth going into the final where she laid down a strong performance on the tough steep section but lost significant time on the flat gliding section coming into the finish.
• The Oetztal Valley of Soelden and Obergurgl-Hochgurgl is the Official European Training Base for the U.S. Ski Team. The team trained on the glacier for two weeks leading up to the race Saturday.
• Tomorrow Ted Ligety (Park City, UT) will be gunning for his third-straight win in Soelden while Bode Miller (Franconia, NH) returns to the snow for the first time since February 2012.
• Universal Sports Network will provide live coverage starting at 7:30 a.m. EDT.

QUOTES
Mikaela Shiffrin
Of course I’m hungry for more. But those girls skied really well out there today so I enjoyed watching some good skiing and I felt like I skied well myself. I just feel like the sky is the limit and my GS is a lot better than last year. It’s tough when you’re only good in one event and you’re skiing two. You just want to improve in both. My biggest goal this year is to keep my slalom but improve my GS so that it can hopefully match my slalom. So we’ll see how it goes.

Happy that the race is over and we have that under our belts. It’s cool to see all the other girls out here and who’s improved. I think today was a pretty good day. At the bottom I scrubbed some speed right where I wasn’t supposed to. But oh well, you live and you learn. I’m really happy with how I did. I’m going to go to the awards ceremony tonight and that doesn’t really happen to me in GS that often. So I’m excited to hopefully keep this going and psyched for Levi.

Julia Mancuso
I think everything is going in the right direction, I’ve had good days training. Yea I learned it’s really important to be 100-percent committed on this steep hill. Second run was better in sections. I would rather have fast sections and make mistakes than the first run when it mostly just slow. Soelden is always difficult and there are always big time differences, so I think it’ll be exciting to watch the best girls come down and rip it.

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