Mikaela Shiffrin won a record-extending 99th World Cup race with victory in the women’s slalom in Austria.
Her triumph on Saturday gives the 29-year-old American the chance to reach a century of wins in front of a home crowd next weekend.
She is scheduled to race in the giant slalom at the Vermont resort of Killington on 30 November, with the slalom the next day.
“I guess there is a bit of pressure around it, but I try to ignore that,” said Shiffrin about potentially reaching the milestone in the US.
“If it happens, it’s wonderful, if it doesn’t happen it’s 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.”
Shiffrin put in a typically commanding display in Gurgl, holding off two young pretenders to win in a combined time of one minute 40.22 seconds.
She held a slender advantage of one-hundredth of a second from the first run, but extended that to 0.55 secs in the second, beating Albanian teenager Lara Colturi into second place, with Switzerland’s Camille Rast third.
It was a first World Cup podium for both Colturi, 18, and Rast, 25.
Shiffrin said she was “really nervous” before her final run, but held it together to claim her 62nd World Cup win in the discipline, maintaining her 100% start to the slalom season after winning the opener in Finland last weekend.
Meanwhile, Norway ski jumper Kristoffer Eriksen Sundal produced a remarkable recovery in qualifying for the men’s World Cup large hill event in Lillehammer.
An advertising hoarding slipped down behind Sundal and knocked him as he was preparing to jump, sending him down the hill earlier than anticipated.
But the 23-year-old gathered himself and managed a long enough distance to make the final, eventually finishing seventh.
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