Two more world cup wins for Mikaela Shiffrin and a good start for a Park City athlete at the beginning of the Tour de Ski among highlights for US Ski & Snowboard.
The men’s alpine team raced over the weekend in Bormio, Italy. US Ski & Snowboard’s Tom Horrocks reports Ryan Cochran-Siegle saw a career best fifth place finish in the alpine combined. Cochran-Siegle now has scored points in five disciplines this season.
“Where Travis Ganong suffered an injury a few years ago he came back and kind of push the demons aside and he was 8th on Friday in the downhill,” Horrocks said. “Also 11th place for Ryan Cochran-Siegle there, and 44th by local Steven Nyman too. Saturday on downhill day two again it was Ryan Cochran-Siegle leading the way 11th, Steven was 18th, and Jared Goldberg out of Sundance, Utah was 22nd.”
Meanwhile the women’s alpine team was led once again by Mikaela Shiffrin.
“She absolutely crushed the field in the women's Giant Slalom winning by 1.36 second to take her 63rd career victory and she passed Annemarie Moser for the outright 4th on the World Cup victories list,” Horrocks explained. “She’s just a few victories behind Marcel Hirscher, of course Lindsey Vonn with 82, and the great Ingemar Stenmark with 86 World Cup victories. Then Mikaela did it again on Sunday, won by .61 seconds over Petra Vlhova and the Slalom for World Cup victory number 64.”
Both men’s and women’s alpine team will head to Croatia this week for their next competition. The cross-country team began the 14th annual Tour de Ski in Switzerland. The stage race began on December 28th with Park City’s Rosie Brennan leading the way for the US team finishing 20th in the 10k mass start. Stage two was a freestyle sprint.
“We had Jessie (Diggins) and Sadie (Bjornsen) finishing 4th and 5th in the stage 2 freestyle Sprint,” Horrocks continued. “All five American women qualified for the heat including Sophie Caldwell who was 9th, Julia Kern who took a podium last weekend was 14th, and Rosie (Brennan) was 25th. For the man Logan (Hanneman) was 21st and Kevin Bulger out of Sun Valley, Idaho was 22nd. The US team is looking pretty good and they've changed up the Tour de Ski this year. It’s based on points and not on time, so Jessie is currently sitting 2nd overall. She is the only American woman to ever finish on the podium, the overall Tour de Ski, so she's well positioned to do that again this year and I know she's gunning for the overall victory.”
The Tour de Ski continues now through January 5th. Freestyle Freeski and Snowboard will resume world cup action later next month.
