ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) – Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin missed a chance to match the record for most consecutive women’s World Cup slalom wins after skiing out in her opening run on Tuesday.
Shiffrin straddled a gate about 25 seconds into her run. It was the first time in more than four years that the American failed to finish a slalom race.
Shiffrin was on a seven-race winning streak, and would have matched the best mark set by Swiss great Vreni Schneider in 1988-89 and Croatian skier Janica Kostelic in 2000-01.
Veronika Velez Zuzulova of Slovakia, who was the runner-up to Shiffrin in the past three slaloms, posted the fastest time in the opening run to lead Bernadette Schild of Austria by 0.39 seconds and Sarka Strachova of Czech Republic by 0.41.