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Vermont native Cochran-Siegle dominates super-G for 1st career win

Staff Report
BORMIO, Italy — The drought is over.

On Tuesday, Mount Mansfield Ski Club’s Ryan Cochran-Siegle became the first American men’s Alpine skier since Bode Miller in 2006 to win a World Cup super-G race.

Cochran-Siegle’s time of 1:29.43 bested Austria’s Vincent Kriechmayr by 0.79 seconds to pull out the win on the Stelvio course in the Italian Alps.

The win was Cochran-Siegle’s first World Cup victory and comes just 10 days after his first career World Cup podium, where he finished second in the super-G in Val Gardena, Italy.

The Starksboro native also became the first American winner on the Stelvio since Miller won a downhill on the same slope 13 years ago to the day.

“It’s definitely a shock to me,” Cochran-Siegle said to The Associated Press. “I didn’t hold any expectations on this track, I just tried to ski the hill as well as I could.”

Cochran-Siegle, 28, and the son of 1972 Olympic slalom champion Barbara Cochran, graduated from Mount Abraham in 2010 and made his World Cup debut in 2011.

He earned his first World Cup points in the super G in his second race on the tour in Beaver Creek, Colorado in 2011.

Among his accomplishments on the slopes, he finished 15th in super-G at the 2013 world championships and was 25th in giant slalom, 28th in super-G and 19th in combined during the 2017 world championships.

He placed 11th in GS, 14th in super-G and 23rd in downhill at the 2018 Winter Games and was 11th in super-G, 12th in downhill and 19th in combined during 2019 world championships.

“Just a lot of years of hard work, working on my my skiing and working on my focus, trying to find that mental race day approach,” Cochran-Siegle told The Associated Press.

American teammate Travis Ganong was 15th with a time of 1:31.28, Bryce Bennett was 37th in 1:32.82, Jared Goldberg was 41st in 1:33.39 and Erik Arvidsson was 45th in 1:34.43.

Defending World Cup super-G champion Mauro Caviezel, who won this season’s first race in the discipline, finished fifth and remained at the top of the discipline standings after three races. Overall World Cup leader Alexis Pinturault finished 12th.

Over the weekend, Cochran-Siegle posted the fastest times in both downhill training runs on the Stelvio. The downhill race is scheduled for Wednesday.

History happened in the women’s Alpine skiing slalom race on Tuesday in Semmering, Austria as well.

For the first time since January 2017, a woman other than the U.S.’s Mikaela Shiffrin or Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova won a World Cup slalom race.

Switzerland’s Michelle Gisin earned her first World Cup win on Tuesday, becoming the first Swiss skier to win a women’s slalom in nearly 19 years.

Gisin trailed Shiffrin by two-hundredths of a second after the first run but posted the second-fastest time in the final run to finish with an overall time of 1:42.05.

Shiffrin dropped to third, 0.57 seconds behind, with a time of 1:42.62.

Austria’s Katharina Liensberger finished second after posting the fastest time in her second run on the course.

Gisin’s win ended a streak of 28 slaloms that were won by either Shiffrin, who triumphed 19 times, or Vlhova.

“I broke the incredible run of two giants,” Gisin said to The Associated Press. “It’s a perfect day.”

Vlhova was 0.89 seconds off the Shiffrin pace in sixth after the first run, but finished fourth overall, shaving 0.55 seconds off her time on the second run.

Vlhova had won all five slaloms since Shiffrin last won in Lienz, Austria last year.

It was the first slalom win for the Swiss women’s team since Marlies Oester shared victory with American Kristina Koznick at a race in Berchtesgaden, Germany, in January 2002, a drought that lasted 162 slaloms.

Shiffrin’s fellow Burke Mountain Academy alumna Nina O’Brien finished a personal-best ninth with a time of 1:45.11. American Katie Hensien was 27th.

The U.S.’s Keely Cashman, Resi Stiegler, Lila Lapanja and Paula Moltzan were among the skiers that didn’t qualify for the finals.

The women’s World Cup continues with another slalom in Zagreb, Croatia, on Sunday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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