Mikaela Shiffrin speeds down the course during the women’s World Cup giant slalom in Mont Tremblant, Que., Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025.
Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press via AP
On a difficult weather day in Canada, Mikaela Shiffrin slid down three spots in her second run to finish just off the podium in the FIS World Cup giant slalom at Mont Tremblant on Saturday afternoon. The Edwards skier finished sixth in a two-run time of 2 minutes, 17.83 seconds as Alice Robinson claimed her second-straight win after her victory at the Copper Cup a week ago.
“I felt very aggressive on the second run, but it was super dark and there were a couple spots where I think looking back I’ll find that I maybe wasn’t as clean as possible,” Shiffrin said. “That’s something I can work on tomorrow.”
Through heavy snowfall in the morning to fog in the afternoon, Robinson extended her first-run lead to a 0.94-second margin over runner-up Zrinka Ljutic as Valerie Grenier claimed her fifth-career podium on home soil in third.
“I was very tired, I just tried to hang on,” the 24-year-old told the media after her sixth-career World Cup win. “The course was faster in the second run. It was colder, the snow had stopped falling, it was quite flat — you had to be tactically smart.”
“To do this at home, it’s such a dream,” Grenier told FIS after her first podium in nearly two years — much of which was spent dealing with injuries. “I can’t get over it, I have no words.”
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Alice Robinson won the women’s World Cup giant slalom in Mont Tremblant, Que. on Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025. The event continues with another GS on Sunday.Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press via AP
Wearing bib 16, Shiffrin was in third after her first run, 0.49 seconds off Robinson’s standard. She told Ski Racing the surface skied well but there was some snow buildup before she pushed out of the gates.
“So, I just tried to push really hard and crank through it,” Shiffrin stated. “I wanted to find my touch again in GS. This morning might have been better than I imagined. I focused on really pushing into my turns. That’s exactly what I wanted to feel.”
Going into her second trip down the Flying Mile course, Shiffrin said her primary aim was to “try and ski the top pitch a little bit cleaner.” But the 30-year-old only posted the 21st-fastest first sector split and ended up drilling a gate right before the finish. Her second-run time was 20th-best in the field.
“I miss-timed some things on the flats, potentially, and you lose speed so fast when it’s that flat,” said Shiffrin, who managed to move back into the top-15 of the World Cup start list with the result. “But all in all, it was super positive.”
Shiffrin now leads Lara Colturi by 122 points in the overall crystal globe chase. She also remains first in the slalom standings and has moved up to fifth in the GS rankings. The U.S. Ski Team put two other athletes in the top-15 on Saturday as Nina O’Brien moved up eight slots into 10th and Paula Moltzan jumped seven skiers to finish in 13th.
“I’m glad we got another shot at it,” O’Brien told U.S. Ski and Snowboard media in a post-race interview. “I feel like this run for me, I had a better attitude going for it more, so hopefully (I) can start off with that same mindset tomorrow. It was challenging conditions, but actually good snow.”
“The visibility’s hard but that’s not anybody’s fault,” Moltzan said. “The course workers have been doing a great job slipping it off; the surface was super reactive.”
A week after making her World Cup debut at Copper Mountain, former Ski and Snowboard Club Vail skier and Vail Mountain School soccer player Kjersti Moritz finished one-hundredth of a second away from earning a second run. Moritz placed 31st in 1:09.72. The final American in the field, Elisabeth Bocock posted a DNF.
“There’s more in the tank,” Moltzan said, looking ahead to day 2. “We have a lot of fast skiing on our team and sometimes mistakes and over skiing get the best of both of us.”
“Same thing with E (Elisabeth Bocock) and Kjersti,” O’Brien added. “They’ve got some great skiing, too.”
The two-day tech series concludes with another giant slalom on Sunday. The first run goes off at 8 a.m. MST and the second follows three hours later. Fans can watch the races with a paid subscription to skiandsnowboard.live.
