Italian Marta Bassino was in an emotional state after winning her fourth World Cup Giant Slalom of the season in Kranjska Gora, her second of the weekend. Michelle Gisin took second with local girl, Meta Hrovat taking third for the second year running. Lara Gut-Behrami and Tessa Worley rounded out the top five with first run leader, Mikaela Shiffrin dropping to sixth after the second run. Alex Tilley put in some hugely impressive splits for the second day running but came out midway down the course.
Shiffrin had lead from the first run with a there tenths of a second lead. Shiffrin is the only racer to have won a Giant Slalom apart from Bassino this season, winning another emotional race in Courchevel. From starting the first run number one and being the last racer to go down the course, Shiffrin had seen every other racer attack the two courses.
As with the first of the two races in Kranjska Gora, those racers that had mastered the hard icy conditions, scored the big places and those that could not, looked out of place at a World Cup ski race. As with the first race Sara Hector was one not to be happy at all in the conditions as she struggleded down into 36th on the rest run, Hector is a World Cup race winner!
Wendy Holdener came down from eleventh after the first run to take the lead with a strong run that showed she was up for the fight. It took another big run from the rejuvenated Lara Gut-Behrami to better the time of her Swiss teammate, this would be the joint second fastest run of the day.
With Goggia and Worley not able to better the combined time set by Gut-Behrami, it took the pride and determination of local girl, Meta Hrovat to take the race lead from fourth after the first run. Hrovat has finished in the top ten fifteen times in her career including a joint third last season in Kranjska Gora. With three to go, Hrovat lead but there was always the worry she would drop down to fourth.
Michelle Gisin was the next down and although she was slower on the run than Hrovat, she was seven hundredths ahead of the Slovenian's combined time. Two to go.
If Holdener, Gut-Behrami, Hrovat and Gisin had all raised the bar, Marta Bassino was on a roll. Three wins out of four Giant Slalom races this season and now she was on the cusp of making it a double in the resort. Her fastest time on the run had put her in prime position to achieve the rare feat.
This left last years double winner in Kranjska Gora, Mikaela Shiffrin to come down the course.
Shiffrin has won in Giant slalom once this season back in Courchevel in December. Her first run was of the highest calibre. Three tenths of a second advantage over Bassino and Shiffrin was on course.
The time ebbed away at the top and continued all the way down. There win disappeared and by the time she crossed the line, Shiffrin was down in sixth. Bassino had the fourth win of the season with Gisin taking her second podium of the weekend while Hrovat backed up her podium last year.
Bassino leads the GS title race by 128 points from Gisin with Brignone in third. Vlhova leads the Overall by 60 points from Gisin with Bassino in third.
Alex Tilley put in another strong performance but a mistake on the first run saw her crash out.
Afterwards, Noel Baxter explained: "Disappointing and hard to take knowing how well Alex is skiing. There are plenty of positives, so we’ll do our best to focus on what she’s doing in those good turns and build on that to make sure develops the confidence to push hard every gate.
"The track here was extremely brutal and many girls struggled, so we have to be happy that she was willing to push and commit to skiing her best, our equipment set up was good which I was a little nervous about when I saw how brutal it was, it’s very rare to see it that slick and bumpy on the women’s tour.
"A few days rest now then we’ll get stuck into training before Kronplatz."
Tilley had posted the 9th and 11th best split times at the top two splits. The numbers speak for themselves!
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