(Reuters) – Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova led the last women’s Alpine skiing World Cup slalom before the Beijing Olympics on Tuesday with American rival Mikaela Shiffrin placed fifth in the opening leg in Schladming, Austria.
The floodlit night race was scheduled for Flachau but rearranged due to rising COVID-19 cases.
Vlhova, skiing first, clocked an opening time of 45.28 seconds with Germany’s Lena Duerr second and 0.27 slower. Canada’s Ali Nullmeyer was in third place ahead of the decisive second leg.
Shiffrin, the overall World Cup leader and U.S. Alpine team’s big medal hope for the Olympics, was second to start and finished the run 0.42 off Vlhova’s pace.
Double Olympic gold medallist Shiffrin has 46 career slalom wins to date, a record for a single discipline that she shares with former Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark, who won 46 giant slaloms.
Vlhova has won five of six slaloms so far this season, finishing second in the other. She can clinch the World Cup title in the discipline on Tuesday if results go her way.
The Beijing Games start on Feb. 4.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
