Mikaela Shiffrin smiles after winning a women’s World Cup slalom on Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Semmering, Austria.
Pier Marco Tacca/AP

On a less-than-ideal surface, Mikaela Shiffrin moved up three places in the second run to win her sixth-straight World Cup slalom on Sunday in Semmering, Austria.

“It was a really hard day today, tough conditions, a really big fight, and the pressure’s on. And, oh, I did my best, best possible run,” Shiffrin said in the post-race NBC interview after rallying from her biggest deficit in a slalom victory since 2013. It was the Edwards’ skier’s fourth win on the Panorama slope.

“It didn’t feel, like, good. I didn’t expect to come down with the green light,” she continued. “It’s been one of those days. It’s like: ‘Let’s refocus and be positive and try’.”

First-run leader Camille Rast finished 0.09 seconds behind Shiffrin in second as 19-year-old Lara Colturi rounded out the podium. The top-five athletes were less than a second apart, but sixth-place finisher Wendy Holdener was a full 2.76 seconds behind Shiffrin’s standard.

In conditions that have sometimes served as Shiffrin’s kryptonite — crusty on top and sugary underneath — the all-time winningest skier sat in fourth after the first run as 39 others posted DNFs, including Vail’s own Liv and Kjersti Moritz. U.S. teammate Paula Moltzan, who crashed and fell on her back and head in the giant slalom on Saturday, was in seventh after the first run but straddled a gate in the second. No other Americans finished inside the top 30.

“It’s a very strange race,” Shiffrin told FIS after the first run. “Challenging. It’s going to be bumpy again; there (are) 3 centimeters of ice on top of a pretty rotten surface on some turns.”

Shiffrin added that conditions were “past the limit” of acceptability for later starters. Even though Shiffrin said her first run wasn’t affected, she advocated for those who were victims of the inconsistent and at times potentially unsafe conditions. FIS reported that “after consultation with the skiers following the inspection for the second run, part of the course was adjusted.”

“My understanding was the way it was kind of set was either not legal or it was going to be basically 15 meters, ski straight into a hairpin, which on this surface, is not safe,” Shiffrin explained.

“So we were standing up there, basically arguing or communicating with many coaches and FIS about how to readjust this. In the end, they readjusted it so that this was not a problem on the course, which I’m really happy about it,” she continued. “But, all the other athletes — there were three athletes, me and two others that were up there, who could see this properly on inspection — and the other athletes had already inspected … it was a very strange moment of a pretty strange day.”

Shiffrin snapped through the new course set on the Austrian pitch, posting the fastest first sector en route to the quickest second run by 0.63 seconds. Rast matched the aggressiveness, but a late slip cost her the precious tenth of a second.

Mikaela Shiffrin speeds down the course on her way to win a women’s World Cup slalom on Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Semmering, Austria.Giovanni Auletta/AP

“I made one mistake on this course in those conditions, and the mistake she made on the final pitch, that was the ticket,” Shiffrin said of Rast, who has been on the podium in six of her past 14 races. “What I did better was one less mistake.”

Rast described the two tech races as “a good weekend.”

“Nine-hundredths is not a lot,” she added. “The smallest mistake, and first place is there. You need two runs without mistake from top to bottom.”

For Colturi, nabbing a fourth podium in five races proved she’s headed in the right direction.

“In the last few races, I’ve been doing much more, and I was just trying my limit. But it was impossible (to win). I just tried to do my best,” she told FIS. “The snow was a little bit better in the second run, so the mindset was to go fast and just to do as I am doing in training, but the second run was too tough. That’s amazing to finish the year with a podium, and now I’ll do the next few races with the same mindset.”

After claiming the final slalom last season, Shiffrin dominated the first four events of this year, winning by an average margin of 1.5 seconds — until Sunday’s close call. The five-straight victories matches her best start to a slalom season since the 2018-19 campaign. Janica Kostelić has the record for the most consecutive World Cup slalom victories (10).

Shiffrin extended her lead over Colturi to 220 points in the slalom cup standings with three more races before the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. There are two more slaloms in March. Shiffrin also leads the overall crystal globe standings by 195 points over Rast.

The women’s World Cup circuit heads to Slovenia next weekend for a giant slalom and slalom in Kranjska Gora.