Shiffrin claims record ninth World Cup slalom title / Photo: Michal Cizek - AFP
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Shiffrin claims record ninth World Cup slalom title
US ski great Mikaela Shiffrin dominated the final World Cup slalom before the Winter Olympics on Sunday to claim a record ninth title in the discipline.
This seventh win in the eight slaloms held this season lifted her above Ingemar Stenmark and Lindsey Vonn to confirm her standing as favourite for a second Olympic slalom gold at next month's Milan-Cortina Games.
With two World Cup slaloms left after the Olympics Shiffrin has an unassailable leader over Camille Rast, the Swiss skier who foiled a Shiffrin slalom clean sweep when denying the 30-year-old from Colorado in Slovenia three weeks ago.
Shiffrin is ski royalty and she reigned majestically on the Spindleruv Mlyn slope where fittingly she had made her first ever World Cup appearance in 2011.
Almost a decade and a half later she is acclaimed as the greatest skier of all time, Sunday's win by a mammoth 1.67sec over Raft was her 71st slalom success and a record-extending 108th career World Cup haul.
N.Handrahan--NG
