KILLINGTON — Vermont-schooled Olympic gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin, returning to the Green Mountain State over the weekend for the World Cup ski racing circuit’s lone U.S. stop for women, talked up a recent bone bruise in hopes of tamping down expectations.
“To be perfectly honest,” the 28-year-old told reporters at the Killington resort on Friday, “I am not sure that my skiing is in a position where I will win.”
Then Shiffrin surprised herself and crowds of nearly 20,000 people by finishing third in Saturday’s giant slalom and, better still, taking first in Sunday’s slalom — increasing her career World Cup victory count to 90 and inspiring NBC sportscasters to crown her the “Queen of Killington” for a seventh consecutive year.
“I’m super, super excited,” Shiffrin told a live television audience of 2 million viewers, “being able to come back and conquer the hill.”
Shiffrin, a 2013 graduate of the Northeast Kingdom’s Burke Mountain Academy, arrived at Killington after suffering a bone bruise to her left knee while training for this month’s start of the World Cup circuit.
Shiffrin placed third in Saturday’s giant slalom, behind Swiss winner Lara Gut-Behrami and New Zealand runner-up Alice Robinson. After retiring to bed at 7:45 p.m. and sleeping 10 hours, the American woke on Sunday to tackle the Killington slalom course she now has won six of the event’s seven times (she finished fifth in 2022).
Skiing last over the weekend, Shiffrin flew down the hill to beat Slovakian Petra Vlhova by 0.33 seconds and 2022 cowinner Wendy Holdener of Switzerland by 1.37 seconds.
Tallying her 55th World Cup slalom victory, Shiffrin has 15 more than the second-most awarded skier in history, Swedish two-time Olympic gold medalist Ingemar Stenmark.
The Killington resort won its own accolades for harnessing 300 volunteers and 15 million gallons of snowmaking water into another year of attendance that multiplied this slope-side town’s population of 1,407 by nearly 14 times.
“This is legitimately the largest crowd,” NBC commentator Picabo Street, a 1998 Olympic gold medalist, said in comparing the Rutland County ski area to circuit hosts in Europe.
The competition also spotlighted two other U.S. skiers with New England connections.
Former University of Vermont skier Paula Moltzan topped Saturday’s giant slalom leaderboard for a time before landing eighth, then followed up in Sunday’s slalom with another eighth-place finish. The 29-year-old, who lives 10 miles south of the state line in Massachusetts, said competing locally came with both advantages and disadvantages.
“There is this extra level of pressure to perform,” Moltzan said. “I know my mom and dad are at the bottom, and you want to show them the best you can do.”
AJ Hurt, a 22-year-old senior at Dartmouth College, finished Saturday’s giant slalom in 19th place for the second-best result of her budding career.
“It feels really good to put one down because it’s been a while,” Hurt told reporters.
Shiffrin is set to compete next in Quebec, but not before expressing gratitude for another winning Thanksgiving weekend at Killington.
“I feel like the crowd really, really helps me here,” she said after her victory. “It’s a pretty incredible hill.”
