World champion Lara Gut-Behrami improved on her second run Saturday to win her first World Cup giant slalom in more than six years, with American Mikaela Shiffrin finishing 13th.
Gut-Behrami of Switzerland was third in the opening run on the course in Killington, Vermont, but just did enough to edge out Marta Bassino of Italy by 0.07 seconds with a two-run time of one minute 44.08 seconds. Defending Olympic champion Sara Hector of Sweden, who had led after the opening run, was third in 1:44.28.
The 31-year-old Gut-Behrami won gold in the discipline at the world championships in Cortina last year but the Swiss had not won a World Cup GS race since October 2016.
Sarah Bennett and Britt Richardson, two of the three Canadians entered in the event, failed to qualify for the second run. Val Grenier of St-Isidore, Ont., did not finish the opening run.
Shiffrin, who won the two season-opening slalom races last weekend, was 1.4 seconds back on home snow, and the passionate crowd will be expecting more on Sunday.
While Shiffrin hails from Vail, Colo., she can almost consider Killington a hometown race as she honed her skills nearby at the Burke Mountain Academy as a teenager.
Shiffrin had finishes of second, third, fourth and fifth in giant slaloms in Killington but has won all five World Cup slaloms held there.
She will be favourite to make it six out of six in the slalom on Sunday. It would be Shiffrin’s 50th World Cup win in that discipline. No other skier has won more titles in a single competition than the 27-year-old Shiffrin.
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