Olympic slalom champion Mikaela Shiffrin said she plans to make her World Cup speed event debut in the season’s first super-G in Lake Louise, Alberta, on Dec. 6, according to The Associated Press.
Shiffrin has captured every major slalom title and is a World Cup race winner in giant slalom. She hoped last season to make her World Cup super-G debut (downhill is the other, faster speed event) but delayed it due to a fall slalom slump.
Shiffrin’s addition of super-G (and possibly super combined) could help her in the chase for this season’s biggest prize, the World Cup overall title. That, coupled with the absence of last season’s top two overall skiers -- Austrian Anna Fenninger (injury) and Slovenian Tina Maze (break from skiing).
Shiffrin finished fourth in last season’s overall standings, behind Fenninger, Maze and Lindsey Vonn.
Vonn and Shiffrin pointed to each other when asked who this season’s overall favorite should be.
Shiffrin did race lower-level super-Gs in Copper Mountain, Colo., last November and finished 15th and 16th in fields not as strong as on the World Cup.
Vonn owns Lake Louise so much that the course is nicknamed “Lake Lindsey.” She won seven straight World Cup races in Lake Louise from 2010 to 2012 and has 15 victories there overall.
Vonn and Shiffrin are expected to both compete in the next World Cup race in Aspen, Colo., a giant slalom on Nov. 27. Shiffrin would then race in Aspen slaloms the next two days (Vonn is not expected to race slalom again).
Lake Louise is the following weekend, with downhills that Friday and Saturday and the super-G on Sunday.
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