Mikaela Shiffrin blazes to Giant Slalom victory in Olympic season opener in Soelden

Alpine skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin claimed victory at the Giant Slalom event in Soelden, Austria on Saturday (23 October) to set out her stall with the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games right around the corner.

Shiffrin clocked the fastest time in the second run to edge out Switzerland's Lara Gut-Behrami by 0.14s in a thrilling second-run shootout.

2021 world champion Gut-Behrami led after Run 1 but Shiffrin found another gear on her second descent to win race one of this season's 38 in Austria.

Reigning overall champion Petra Vlhova finished third, +1.30 sec. off Shiffrin's winning mark.

Last year's GS title winner Marta Bassino of Italy crashed out on Run 1, and the previous season's winner Federica Brignone on Run 2, to highlight the difficulty of the course, a tough day on the snow for the Italian team.

Shiffrin: "Starting off the season strong is important"

But it was a festive atmosphere on the sun-soaked Rettenbach glacier with 16,000 spectators - around half of the pre-Covid numbers - allowed in to watch for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.

And no one had more to celebrate than U.S. ski superstar Mikaela Shiffrin who claimed her 70th career World Cup win, her 13th in Giant Slalom.

"Starting off the season strong is important so I'm super happy," she said afterwards.

"It's hard to explain but it was a pleasure to ski today it was so amazing with the preparation I don't know how to explain how good it felt to ski the hill so, thanks Soelden 'cos, ya, good job!"

It's Shiffrin's first victory at the traditional season opener since 2014,  when she shared the victory with Anna Veith.

So why is it so tough to win this race?

"It's early to start," Shiffrin explained, "already racing in October, it feels like 'oh gosh, here we go!' So sometimes I think people are not pushing so hard they're just trying to... almost use it like training, but you have to really attack this hill and I've learned that the hard way and I've learned that the good way so today was a good one!"

Elsewhere the U.S. team had a big day too as Nina O'Brien (9th), A J Hurt (20th), and Paula Moltzan (23rd) made it four U.S. skiers in the top 25.

New Zealand's Alice Robinson was one of the pre-race favourites and ended up in 11th while there were good showings from Swedish newcomer Hanna Aronsson Elfman, who scored her first World Cup points on her debut at just 18 years of age, finishing in 26th.

And from Scotland's Alex Tilley who had her highest finish in 13th for Great Britain.