Slalom, Women1

The women’s slalom was originally scheduled for the 14th, but was postponed to the 16th because of strong winds. The dominant female slalom skier in the last years was Mikaela Shiffrin. The defending champion in the event from Sochi, she had won four out of the last five slalom World Cups (2012/13-2014/15 and 2016/17) and the last three World Championships slalom (2013, 2015 and 2017), losing only the 2015/16 slalom Crystal Globe to Frida Hansdotter, a season in which Shiffrin struggled with injuries. The current standings in the slalom World Cup also saw Shiffrin well in the lead as she won in Killington, Lienz, Zagreb, Kranjska Gora and Flachau, and additionally won the parallel slaom in Courchevel and the city parallel event in Oslo. In second place, with two season wins in Levi and Lenzerheide, which was the last race before the Olympics, was Petra Vlhová, followed by Hansdotter, silver medalist at the 2015 Worlds and bronze medalist at the 2017 Worlds, in third, and Wendy Holdener, silver medalist at the 2017 Worlds, in fourth. The silver medalist from Sochi, Marlies Schild, now Raich, retired shortly thereafter and the bronze medalist Kathrin Zettel retired in 2015.

The first run saw Holdener in the lead with Hansdotter only 1/10th of a second behind. Unexpectedly in third position was Anna Swenn-Larsson with Shiffrin “only” in fourth place, 0.48 seconds behind Holdener. Vlhová had even more problems, finishing only 12th and more than 1.2 seconds behind. In the second run, young Austrian Katharina Gallhuber, whose best World Cup finish was a shared fifth place in the Stockholm city event almost a month before the Games, skied the race of her life, posting the best run time. This put her in the lead and when Haver-Løseth, Shiffrin and Swenn-Larsson all were not able to beat Gallhuber’s overall time, she was on the podium winning a surprising medal.

At the end it was bronze for her with Hansdotter winning gold and Holdener only 0.05 seconds behind taking silver, finishing in second place, as she did so often. Shiffrin missing the podium was one of the biggest upsets of the PyeongChang Olympics. Finishing in seventh place was Bernadette Schild, who had an incredible second run and led until the last intermediate time before she slipped just before the last flat part of the course and had to take some gates from the wrong side, which cost her speed. Hansdotter won gold using Rossignol skis, Holdener used Head, and Gallhuber skied on Atomic.