The defending champion from Slovakia is now reaching for the big crystal ball again: In the giant slalom in Are/Sweden, Petra Vlhová showed two strong runs and won by a wide margin. After two rounds she was 1.24 seconds ahead of the Italian Marta Bassino – a small world in alpine skiing. Third was the American Mikaela Shiffrin (+ 1.70 seconds).
Shiffrin was still able to work his way up from sixth place in the final round. Her opponent Vlhová was able to gain “only” 40 points on her in the overall World Cup that day.
Vlhová had already led after the first round. She only showed a fabulous run in the upper and middle sections of the course, before she could no longer keep her narrow line in the last gates and thus lost several tenths of a second to her competitors.
In the second run, it was Franziska Gritsch from Austria who took advantage of being able to get onto the piste early on, which quickly deteriorated when the temperatures were above zero. Gritsch ran the best time and improved from 25th place to sixth, just behind Tessa Worley (France/+ 1.91) and her teammate Ricarda Haaser (+ 1.93)