Lara Gut-Behrami narrowly misses out on her tenth medal in the last World Championship race of her career. The skier from Ticino finished six hundredths off the podium in fifth place in the giant slalom in Saalbach.
Gut-Behrami was six hundredths short of bronze. Italy's Federica Brignone took gold ahead of Alice Robinson from New Zealand and Paula Moltzan from the USA. This is the 34-year-old from Milan's first World Championship title in the giant slalom after winning silver in 2011 and 2023. Her only previous World Championship gold medal came in the combined in 2023.
One week after her 2nd place in the super-G, Brignone triumphed with a lead of nine tenths. Moltzan was already 2.62 seconds behind. While many of the co-favorites had major difficulties with the softened, heavily salted slope, Brignone was in a class of her own in both runs. She also set the best time in the final with bib number 30. After the first run, the overall World Cup leader was already more than six tenths ahead of Robinson and more than a second ahead of Moltzan.
At 34, Brignone also became the oldest female giant slalom world champion - a record that could also have been achieved by Gut-Behrami, who is one year younger. After finishing 2nd in Kronplatz in the last World Cup giant slalom before the World Championships, the 2021 World Champion was unable to improve on her run this season.
The silver medal in the team combined with Wendy Holdener on Tuesday therefore remains Gut-Behrami's last World Championship highlight as the second most successful Swiss ski racer behind Vreni Schneider - provided she sticks to her plans. She recently announced that she would no longer be competing in Crans-Montana in 2027.
Gut-Behrami in hundredths of a second, the other Swiss women clearly beaten
Although she didn't have the best race, Gut-Behrami was only a hundredth of a second away from her tenth medal at the World Championships. With this she would have beaten Pirmin Zurbriggen, with whom she drew level two days ago. Gut-Behrami made too many slips, especially in the first run, in which she was fourth fastest despite being considerably behind. In the second run, hundredths decided the battle for bronze against her.
The other Swiss women did not fare as well as they would have liked. Camille Rast at least improved by two positions in the second run, but there was no more than 11th place possible. The mortgage from the first run weighed too heavily. Her immediate preparation had been disrupted by the fact that 18-year-old Albanian Lara Colturi had to vomit in the start house next to her.
Wendy Holdener and Michelle Gisin finished in 25th and 26th place after two modest runs, more than six and seven seconds behind Brignone respectively.
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