MERIBEL – Mikaela Shiffrin’s standout World Cup season ended by letting the giant slalom title slip away to Tessa Worley on Sunday.
As the final racer of the women’s season, Shiffrin was the first-run leader with a 0.82-second advantage needing to win the race to clinch an unlikely victory in the giant slalom standings.
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Instead, Shiffrin’s time was the slowest of the 24 second-run finishers and she placed seventh. She was 0.67 behind race winner Federica Brignone.
That opened the door for Worley and the 50 points she earned for placing fourth to end atop the giant slalom standings.
The day started with Sara Hector favored to add the World Cup giant slalom title to her Olympic gold medal, but the Swedish racer could place only 14th.
At age 32, Worley’s win was her first major title or medal for five years in her specialist event. She won the World Cup title and a world championships gold medal in 2017.
Shiffrin ends the season with the biggest prize in the sport – the overall World Cup title she sealed Thursday at the World Cup Finals meeting in the French Alps.
She raced Sunday with a ribbon in the yellow and blue colors of Ukraine’s flag attached to her helmet.
Brignone, the 2020 overall champion, won the race 0.31 ahead of her Italian teammate Marta Bassino. Petra Vlhova, who lost her overall title to Shiffrin this week, was third Sunday, 0.37 back.
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