VAL DI FASSA – Mikaela Shiffrin moved closer to a sixth career World Cup overall title Sunday by scoring points in a rare start in super-G that her closest rival Emma Aicher did not finish.
Shiffrin placed 23rd in the race won by 35-year-old Elena Curtoni, who would have set a series of World Cup age records for women but for the recent comeback of 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn.
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A stellar race for the home Italian team also saw unheralded 29-year-old Asja Zenere take a shocking third place wearing the low-ranked start bib No. 33.
In just her second start in a super-G in more than two years, Shiffrin wore the No. 31 bib starting a half-hour after Aicher surprisingly skied out in the middle of a fast run that was set to take the lead.
Shiffrin earned just eight World Cup points though extended her lead over Aicher to 125 with six races left this season, including two in the slalom discipline she has dominated. Shiffrin is also the Olympic champion in slalom.
Aicher is an all-event racer, which is unusual in modern Alpine skiing, though she rarely scores top-10 results in giant slalom.
Curtoni completed an unexpected sweep of the three-race weekend for the home team in the sun-splashed Dolomites mountains. Laura Pirovano won both downhills by the minimum margin of 0.01 seconds and looked a little fatigued Sunday when placing eighth, 0.46 back.
"Seeing Laura being at the top the last two days, it was charging me,” said Curtoni, who has been waiting since 2022 to get a fourth career World Cup win. “It was a roller coaster, I knew I was not done.”
At 35, Curtoni is now the oldest winner of a women's super-G in the World Cup, and only Vonn was older when winning any World Cup race. Vonn's last victory was a downhill in January.
Curtoni was 0.26 faster than runner-up Kajsa Vickhoff Lie and Zenere pushed Romane Miradoli, the Olympic silver medalist last month, and Alice Robinson into a tie for fourth.
Zenere had never been better than ninth before her 50th career World Cup start Sunday.
Goggia's lead cut
Robinson closed the gap on Sofia Goggia, leader in the season-long super-G standings, ahead of a duel between them at the final race March 22 at Kvitfjell, Norway. Aicher can no longer top the discipline standings.
Goggia, a four-time winner of the season-long downhill standings, would have sealed her first career super-G title with victory Sunday but was 0.64 back in ninth.
The Italian veteran’s lead over Robinson was cut to 63 points with 100 on offer for the race winner in Norway.
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing