mate Justin Murisier, who finished second.
“We’re looking to move forward,” said team captain
Walt Evans after the GS, “and start getting results
now.”
While the men had been racing, the women had
been training for the downhill, which was the next
event on the schedule. Norway’s Lotte Smiseth
Sejersted got the gold ahead of Wendy Holdner of
Switzerland and Cornelia Huetter of Austria. Anna
Marno, a top- 10 skier on this season’s NorAm cir-
cuit, was the top U.S. finisher in 17th. Abby Ghent
was next up in 25th.
The women’s GS should have been a strong event
for the team. But it wasn’t. Ghent, the only Ameri-
can finisher, was 29th. Two failed to finish, one was
disqualified and one, Shiffrin, was sick in bed with a
stomach virus probably picked up from the group of
parents who came to lend support. Nothing seemed
to be going right.
“We’ve had better days, that’s for danged sure,”
said Evans, his enthusiasm waning. Sarah Hector,
of Sweden, won the bronze in the event in 2010.
This year she got gold with a charging first run that
put the pressure on her closest competitors. Lisa
Magdalena Agerer was the silver medalist and Wen-
dy Holdner the bronze for her second medal of the
meet.
Day Five was, easily, the best day of the champion-
ships for the Americans.
First off, Moffat rose to the occasion for fourth in the
men’s downhill. It wasn’t a podium, but it was more
Hodler Cup points and helped the mood some. The
gold went to Slovene Bostjan Kline and the silver to
Austrian Frederic Berthold with Otmar Striediner in
the bronze-medal position.
Shiffrin helped the mood considerably with her
bronze-medal performance after a rough night bat-
tling the stomach bug.
“She was a little pale this morning,” said coach John
Dwyer, “but she wanted to race and is a strong girl.
She fought through the illness.”
A bit disoriented from the bout, Shiffrin said the day
came at her in a whirlwind. She said, while standing
in the start, “I realized I really felt pretty good.” Her
first run wasn’t particularly pretty — she made mis-
takes and wasn’t clean, but she wound up fourth, a
position she bumped up a notch for the medal in the
second run where she put in some of her smartest
racing.
While that all was being celebrated, no other Ameri-
can woman finished, which closed the chances for
combined points.
With just the super Gs left, the combineds could be
totaled. Cochran-Siegle, Michael Ankeny and Keiffer
Christianson were in 12th, 15th and 19th, respec-
tively.
Cochran-Siegle also contributed the top U.S. super
G finish, man or woman, in 11th, but the day was un-
equivocally tarnished when Moffat, who had the best
American men’s finish of the meet, broke his leg and
elbow while freeskiing to the start house.
The speed guys from the downhill, Kline and Ber-
thold, repeated their gold and silver medal perfor-
mances in the super G with Murisier getting bronze.
The towel had already been thrown in by the time
of the women’s super G. Ghent again led the team,
in 21st place.
The Canadians had a decent showing. Philip Brown
got a bronze medal in combined, a seventh in super
G, and 11th in GS and 14th in slalom. Erik Read
was fifth in combined, sixth in slalom. Brittan Phel-
an posted sixth in slalom, Sarah Freeman ninth in
downhill and Madison Irwin 10th in GS. Altogether
they posted 17 top- 20 placings.
WORLD JUNIOR ALPINE CHAMPIONSHIPS
Anna Marno
