Retour
American Paula Moltzan earned her first Alpine skiing World Cup win after more than a decade since she started racing on the sport’s highest level.
Moltzan, 32, won the season-opening giant slalom in Soelden, Austria, rallying from fifth place after the opening run to win by one hundredth of a second over Albanian Lara Colturi combining times from two runs.
“It feels like a fairytale right now, pretty unreal,” Moltzan said.
Moltzan, who debuted on the World Cup in 2012 and was dropped from the U.S. Ski Team ten years ago, had 10 second- or third-place finishes on the World Cup before Saturday.
After winning her first Olympic medal last February (bronze in the team combined), Moltzan changed skis, becoming the lone woman on the World Cup to sign with Van Deer.
It paid off. She’s the oldest woman to win her first World Cup.
Mikaela Shiffrin had the fastest opening run by 14 hundredths of a second over Swede Sara Hector, then was 27th-fastest in the second run to drop to seventh overall.
The men race a giant slalom in Soelden on Sunday at 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. ET, live on Peacock, which streams every race this season.