Mikaela Shiffrin secures World Cup win No. 99 in Gurgl, Austria

Mikaela Shiffrin captured her 99th-career World Cup win in Gurgl, Austria Saturday morning. The 29-year-old posted the fastest first-run time on the Kirchenkar slalom course and held on for a two-run total of 1 minute, 40.22 seconds.

The win was Shiffrin’s record-extending 62nd slalom win and her sixth-straight in the event on the World Cup circuit, but her first on the Gurgl slope.

“It feels really satisfying to have a really great run down that slope,” she said in the live broadcast post-race interview. “What a wonderful day.”

Camile Rast of Switzerland placed third and Lara Colturi was just 0.55 seconds behind Shiffrin in second. Paula Moltzan was the second-best American in the field, finishing in sixth.

The leader’s chair was a revolving door in the run-up to Shiffrin’s final run as five straight skiers stole the lead from one another, starting with Sweden’s Sara Hector. American Paula Moltzan came next, followed by Germany’s Lena Duerr, Rast and Colturi. Every skier took advantage of the relatively wide-open course set up, where time was there for the taking in the lower section. As each athlete lowered the bar, Shiffrin wondered if she could meet the challenge.

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“I was really nervous on the top,” she said. “I could hear all the women going down and their teams were cheering and that always means they had a really good run — I was like, I don’t think it’s happening today.”

The penultimate athlete to hit the slopes, Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener, lost her timing at the top of the pitch but recovered enough to save a fourth place finish.

Shiffrin burst out of the gate, stumbling slightly in the second sector, where she only managed the 18th-fastest split. But the Edwards skier felt the mistake and tightened the screws over the third and fourth intervals to finish with the fifth-fastest second run of the day.

The victory sets Shiffrin up to possibly claim her 100th-career World Cup win on home soil in Killington, where she has won six times going back to 2016.

“I guess there’s a bit of pressure around it, but I try to ignore that,” she said of the milestone’s timing. “If it happens, it’s wonderful; if it doesn’t, kind of nothing to cry about in the grand scheme, but I hope to have a really good performance in front of the home crowd.”

This story will be updated throughout the day.