Mikaela Shiffrin 7th in Cortina downhill; record chase on hold | CBC Sports

American skier Mikaela Shiffrin’s pursuit of a record-breaking 83rd World Cup victory is still on hold.

Shiffrin finished seventh, 0.39 seconds behind Slovenian winner Ilka Stuhec in a downhill Saturday on the course that will be used for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.

Shiffrin therefore remained tied with former teammate Lindsey Vonn for the women’s record at 82 wins each.

Season-long downhill leader Sofia Goggia, who won Friday’s race in Cortina, fell midway through her run but avoided injury.

Shiffrin finished fourth in the first of two downhills in Cortina on Friday after a slight error. In this race, she didn’t appear to make any significant mistakes but just didn’t have enough speed in a discipline that is far from her best.

Canadian Stephanie Fleckenstein was 35th, finishing 2.28 seconds behind Stuhec.

A super-G will complete the Cortina weekend on Sunday.

Stuhec, the 2017 and 2019 world champion in downhill, finished 0.26 ahead of Kajsa Vickhoff Lie and 0.34 ahead of Elena Curtoni.

Stuhec hadn’t won a World Cup race since December 2018.

The Olympia delle Tofane course was shortened due to wind, removing the course’s most characteristic section, the Tofana Schuss or “chute” between two walls of rock.

About a third of the course was eliminated.

Goggia lost control while landing a jump, got twisted around, slammed through a gate and slid down the mountain before quickly getting up and skiing down to the finish, where she waved to the crowd to say she was OK.

The safety air bag under Goggia’s racing suit inflated during her crash, which may have helped soften her crash landing.

“I really just made an error. It wasn’t a concentration lapse,” Goggia said. “It went well in that nothing happened.”

Goggia broke two fingers in her left hand during a downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, last month, then returned after a quick surgery to win another downhill a day later. She also crashed nastily in a super-G last weekend in St. Anton, Austria, but avoided injury.

“Blow after blow but tomorrow I’ll race,” Goggia said.

Austrian skier Nina Ortlieb also fell hard while landing a jump and ended up in the safety nets immediately before Goggia’s run.

Meanwhile, reigning world and Olympic champion Corinne Suter didn’t start after falling in Friday’s race. The Swiss team says the decision was a “precautionary” measure and that Suter was not injured but she “didn’t feel 100 per cent.”