Alpine Ski Worlds: Mikaela Shiffrin queen of the giant, cruel disappointment for Tessa Worley

Europe 1 with AFP 8:34 p.m., February 16, 2023

What does a medal belong to?

Two great champions, Mikaela Shiffrin and Tessa Worley, made a small mistake at the end of the second run, when fates changed.

Worley's skis snagged, resulting in a fall on his back, a smooth slide towards the nets and disqualification.

A few seconds later and a few gates lower, Shiffrin was able to restore an imbalance in order to limit the damage and win by twelve hundredths of a second, a bit of time.

The two skiers, in the front rows after the first run, rushed to make history.

A bet once again paid off for Shiffrin, while Worley had to settle for his golden memories, watching the Italian Federica Brignone and the Norwegian Ragnhild Mowinckel take the podium for silver and bronze.

"I couldn't believe it because I imagined myself screwing up everything and losing in the second moto," Shiffrin revealed after the race.

"I pushed as hard as I could. At the end, (…) I was in disbelief, I felt proud and also lucky."

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Seven titles, four disciplines

The French team at home remains glued to two medals, those of Alexis Pinturault, as much as the American Mikaela Shiffrin, who wins regardless of the disciplines, the tracks and the circumstances.

On Wednesday morning, fans of the circuit spat out their cup of coffee when the American team revealed the sudden departure of its historic coach Mike Day, thanked by the Shiffrin clan after seven years of collaboration, in the middle of the competition the most important of the year.

The next day, the American won a seventh world title in a fourth different discipline after slalom (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019), super-G (2019) and combined (2021).

The 27-year-old skier paid tribute to her longtime coach: "Thank you for these seven years. He has been an integral part of my team, and he has been there during the most incredible moments of my career, and the most difficult", she said with emotion.

With seven individual titles at the World Championships, she joins the Swedish Anja Pärson, the Austrians Toni Sailer and Marcel Hirscher, and the Frenchwoman Marielle Goitschel on the list.

Only Germany's Christl Cranz (15 medals including 12 titles) has won more titles and medals than Shiffrin, feats unmatched with the annual Worlds of the 1930s, some with few entrants in the Nazi Germany era .

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"Finger Touch"

Launched on a cannon season in the World Cup - 11 successes for a total of 85, one victory from the combined men's and women's record of Ingemar Stenmark -, the skier from Colorado shows that she has definitively erased the failure of the Olympic Games of Beijing in 2022 (no medal, three outings).

So close to Shiffrin at the end of the first race, so far in the second, Tessa Worley saw her hopes vanish.

At 33, the Frenchwoman, already double world champion of the giant (2013 and 2017) dreamed of an unprecedented third coronation for the last great challenge of her career, carried by her public, on the same track where she had conquered the small giant globe last year.

“It stops very suddenly, there, to nothing at all from the public, regretted the Frenchwoman. I imagined myself in front of these bleachers filled with French people singing the Marseillaise … But that’s not how the day is written."

"The idea was to go for something big, I touched it with my finger," she breathed.

Slightly overtaken by Shiffrin, the Italian Federica Brignone, Olympic vice-champion in the specialty, also won a second medal in Méribel after the combined gold at the start of last week, overcoming the fever that bedridden for four days.