Rebensburg Gets Her Globe After Canceled GS

The end of the 2017-18 World Cup season was bit anticlimactic. No big head-to-head show down for the GS or overall globes in a heated second run. No crashes. Not even a start. Mother Nature shut the season down prematurely with extreme wind, and organizers were forced to cancel the last race.

Nevertheless, there were awards to be handed out including Viktoria Rebensburg’s discipline globe. The German won her third GS globe, 92 points ahead of Tessa Worley of France.

“When you win the globe, it means you had consistency over the whole season,” Rebensburg said. “It’s not just one race where everything has to fit together, so it means pretty a lot to me actually because it’s really–from the sport side–the best prize you can achieve in our sport I think.”

Over the course of the season, the German took three wins, three second-place finishes and two results outside the top 10, amassing 582 points.

“You can always be better,” she shared. “For sure, I had two races where I was 14th and 11th, so the rest was not worse than second place, so those two could be better.”

American Mikaela Shiffrin finished third in the giant slalom standings with five podium finishes in eight starts including two wins. She also got to hold her second big globe, which Shiffrin secured a few weeks ago in Ofterschwang. In the end, she earned 1773 points in the overall standings, 605 points ahead of second-place athlete Wendy Holdener of Switzerland. Rebensburg was third in the overall standings.

Mikaela Shiffrin and her two 2018 globes. // Image credit: GEPA / Daniel Goetzhaber

“I mean it’s incredible,” Shiffrin shared. “Even today, it’s sort of strange because we didn’t race, but just to have it for the second time, this season was so incredible for me, that I really felt like this was a statement to say ‘I’m here. I’m really one of the best skiers in the world, and I deserve to have this.’ It’s so nice to stand on the podium up there with the big globe and just take in that moment.”

She once again shared that moment with the men’s winner Marcel Hirscher of Austria, who walked away with his seventh consecutive World Cup overall title.

“This happened last year, too,” Shiffrin said. “He came out with the big globe, the two small globes and everything and he’s like, ‘So, I don’t know how to do this.’ Nothing like standing next to Marcel Hirscher to make me feel like I didn’t do anything this year. I though that last year, too, and I was like, ‘What can you do? He’s a machine.”

Just minutes after collecting her globe, the American was already looking ahead to 2018-19.

“We’re going to start training pretty much immediately, but for sure I’m going to have a bit of a break,” she said. “I’m going to see my Nana. I’m going to go home. The next season starts immediately, but I’m going to make sure to enjoy it a bit.”