Ski shooting star Emma Aicher came third in the last slalom of the season, but she only has theoretical chances in the fight for the ball.
Emma Aicher lets her ball dream live. With Mikaela Shiffrin’s confident victory, the ski shooting star came third – and still has a chance of winning the overall World Cup. The final decision has now been postponed until the last race of the World Cup season, the giant slalom on Wednesday. Aicher is 85 points behind Shiffrin. So she has to win and hope for a mistake from Shiffrin. In the giant slalom, actually her worst discipline, the 22-year-old has never been on the podium before – making up 85 points on Shiffrin would be a small skiing miracle.
The Swiss Wendy Holdener came second on Tuesday. The slalom season ends disappointingly for Lena Dürr (+3.75 seconds) – she came 17th.
Shiffrin already had the small ball safe
The race in the Scandinavian north, in Hafjell, Norway, got off to a good start for Emma Aicher: As usual, she carved calmly through the slalom bars in the first run and completed the very long run without any mistakes.
But her ball opponent and Alpine dominator Mikaela Shiffrin gained a comfortable time advantage of over a second over half-time runner-up Wendy Holdener in the first run. In the second round they both went one better, Aicher improved from fourth place to third place and Shiffrin drove her lead cleanly to the finish.
Shiffrin had already secured the small ball before – she was able to win nine of the ten World Cup slaloms of the season – she only had to admit defeat once.
America’s Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates her victory
Only 95 points in speed races for Aicher
In the fight for the big crystal ball, however, the much younger Aicher remains stubborn: In the speed races of the World Cup finals, the 22-year-old only got 95 out of a possible 200 points and thus gave away important points in the ball fight. Even without success in the overall World Cup, the half-German and half-Swede finished a fantastic season, by far the best of her young career: The all-rounder was on the podium ten times in the World Cup – in three different disciplines.
She was the fastest three times – in the downhill race in St. Moritz and in the Super-G races in Soldeu and Tarvisio. She returned home from the Olympic Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo with two silver medals. It will become clear on Wednesday whether she will succeed in the biggest coup of her young career.
