Shiffrin leads, Meillard has her sights set on the podium

Shiffrin is well on her way to claiming her 101st World Cup victory in Are, her seventh in the Swedish ski resort. The American showed a flawless run with bib number 1 and distanced the competition by 43 hundredths and more.

Directly behind Shiffrin, four skiers are classified within just 14 hundredths. At the top of the quartet is the German Lena Dürr, followed by Mélanie Meillard. The skier from Neuchâtel, who lives in Valais, coped best with the conditions and was clearly the fastest up to the second intermediate time. She then lost a lot of time in the bottom sector.

Wendy Holdener is the second best Swiss in the classification. The racer from Schwyz, who has already stood on the podium three times in Are, is in 8th intermediate place, 93 hundredths behind.

In the battle for the small crystal globe, neither the leader Zrinka Ljutic nor her first pursuer Camille Rast were able to convince. Ljutic lost a lot of time in the final section after a mistake and is only in 10th intermediate place, 1.03 seconds behind. Rast was unable to take advantage of the Croatian's lead. On the contrary: the skier from Valais, who is 39 points behind Ljutic in the slalom rankings, did not get going at all and lost 1.6 seconds without making any obvious mistakes.