Lena Dürr rested her arms on her thighs and pumped like a cockchafer. But when she regained her breath in the finish arena at Copper Mountain at around 3,000 m above sea level, the exhaustion quickly gave way to joy at the best giant slalom result of her already long career.
“Today I’m proud of myself,” said the 34-year-old after sixth place in New Zealand’s Alice Robinson’s fifth World Cup victory and added happily: “We’ve invested a lot in the giant slalom over the last two years in order to be ready for days like this and be able to compete at the front. Today I managed to push myself to the limit in both runs.”
The fact that after fourth place in the first round a little more was possible in “Rosi’s Race Arena” did not dampen her joy one bit. No wonder: in the 69th giant slalom of her career, she was only in the top 10 for the fourth time. Her best “giant” to date with eighth place in Aspen, also in the US state of Colorado, was 14 years ago, and in the meantime Dürr had even given up her second discipline alongside slalom.
In Copper she found a “perfect” piste and didn’t really let the more difficult conditions with wind and flat visibility slow her down in the finale. “It was incredibly fun,” she said, even though “it was quite high.”
Robinson was 1.44 seconds away, just 0.36 seconds away from the stick. Ski queen Mikaela Shiffrin, who is only getting back to her second favorite discipline after her serious fall, was 14th, 0.64 seconds behind Dürr. You can be proud of that.