Huge crowd turns out to see Mikaela Shiffrin race at Copper Mountain

Copper Mountain – Maybe it was because the Winter Olympics are only nine weeks away. Having Mikaela Shiffrin’s name on the marquee was certainly a factor, given that the winningest ski racer of all time was performing on a hill just 30 minutes from her home in Edwards.

But the crowd of thousands that gathered at Copper Mountain’s East Village base area for the Women’s World Cup giant slalom on Saturday was much larger than the crowd that attracts Beaver Creek every December for the Men’s World Cup. There were large crowds at the men’s races held here on Thursday and Friday – marking the return of World Cup racing to Copper for the first time in 24 years – but there were huge crowds on Saturday.

“I’m shocked,” Shiffrin told the crowd after finishing 14th on the technically challenging course. “Coming out the weekend after Thanksgiving — people can do so many other things right now — it’s really exciting to see so many people. And there’s so much excitement. It’s amazing to be at home and have this kind of presence.”

Copper had not hosted World Cup racing since 2001, when the early-season race scheduled for Aspen was moved here due to insufficient snowfall there. There was a similar situation two years ago when the race scheduled for Park City, Utah was moved here.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had racing at this level, so I’m not surprised people wanted to come out and see the racers,” said Dustin Lyman, Copper Mountain general manager.

Shiffrin found the first run difficult due to changing ice conditions and finished 18th, 1.74 seconds behind eventual winner Alice Robinson of New Zealand. In the second round he took a different approach.

“I had to make a big adjustment to my technical signals,” Shiffrin said. “This surface is very specific. It’s really hard to stay consistently fast for the entire run.”

Her second race was better and she moved up four places in the final standings.

“I was able to execute 90% of the runs really well, so I’m stoked,” Shiffrin said. “It’s hard to change your mindset between the first and second run of a race, to really execute and execute on it. I think for the most part I was able to do that.”

While she is still working on her early season GS form, she dominated the first two slalom races of the season in Finland and Austria with huge winning margins, and will be the favorite in Sunday’s slalom, her best event. She enters the race with 103 World Cup wins, 17 more than the second-winningest racer, Sweden’s Ingmar Stenmark.

He doesn’t expect it to be easy. Sunday marks the first time this season that women will compete on consecutive days, and at an altitude of more than 10,000 feet.

“The women who ran this race, we’re all really feeling our legs. I’m already feeling my legs,” said Shiffrin, 30.

Shiffrin’s fiancé, Norwegian Alexander Amod Kilde, returned to racing on Thursday, nearly two years after a horrific downhill crash in Wengen, Switzerland, that left him with serious leg and shoulder injuries. Shiffrin said that watching her come out of the starting gate was “so incredible, inspiring and emotional.” He was at the finish area to watch her race Saturday and will race at Beaver Creek next weekend.

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