Les Bleues had been waiting for this for seventeen years! Romane Miradoli won the super-G in Lenzerheide (Switzerland) on Saturday March 5, signing at the same time the first French victory in a World Cup speed event since Ingrid Jacquemod (downhill from Santa Caterina) in 2005. The last victory in super-G was the work of Carole Montillet in Haus im Ennstal (Austria) in February 2004.
A historic performance acquired to everyone’s surprise, the 27-year-old skier having never done better than a fifth place on the world circuit. “It’s crazy, I can’t believe it. It was a tough run, but I was finally able to do a full up and down run. I didn’t think I was fast, I felt like I was late at every gate.”she said on arrival.
Starting with bib number eight, the Frenchwoman increased her risk-taking on a very demanding track, narrowly missing out several times. But it was ultimately she who finished upside down, ahead of the American Mikaela Shiffrin by 38 hundredths and the Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami, Olympic champion in the discipline, by 88 hundredths.
The beautiful operation of Mikaela Shiffrin
A nice revenge for Romane Miradoli, frustrated by the Olympics where she had not managed to join the fight with the best (13e downhill, 11e of the Super G), and returned to competition in December after being kept away from the slopes for a year due to a ruptured cruciate ligament in her left knee.
Second in the day’s race, the American Mikaela Shiffrin took advantage of the poor performance of her Slovak rival Petra Vlhova (18e) to take a 67-point lead in the overall standings. For her part, the Italian Federica Brignone, 9ewon the small globe of the specialty even before the last super-G, in Courchevel in two weeks.
It should be noted that, behind the sensation Romane Miradoli, the other French women also shone on the Swiss track. Tessa Worley took sixth place in the event, one second and thirty-seven hundredths behind their compatriot; Laura Gauche, the ninth, at two seconds and twenty hundredths.