March 20, 2022 - World junior slalom champion 18-year-old Zrinka Ljutić took the opportunity to compete in the World Cup finals in Meribel, France, where she won fifth place in the strongest competition!
Slovenian Andreja Slokar won the first slalom victory in her career, reports Gol.hr.
The Zagreb skier achieved an excellent result in the first run when she reached ninth place with the starting number of 25, and with her uncompromising performance in the final run, she achieved the sixth-best time for the fifth place in the end, which brought her 45 points.
The 24-year-old Slovenian Andreja Slokar skied exceptionally in the second run, and after the sixth time in the first slalom, she achieved a great advantage over the competitors. In the second performance, the Slovenian skier was 1.23 seconds faster than the leader of the first run German Lena Duerr, which in the end brought her 48 hundredths of an advantage. In the end, the best slalom skier in the world and the Olympic winner in this discipline, Petra Vlhova, finished in third and was 81 hundredths behind the winner.
The big day for Slovenian skiers was completed by Ana Bucik, who won fourth place with 1.04 seconds behind her compatriot. However, Zrinka Ljutić was 45 hundredths of a second slower than Slokar in the second run, and in the end, she finished 1.22 seconds behind.
Unfortunately, Leona Popović finished the second competition in a row with a mistake in the first run. As a result, the best Croatian skier ended the season with 146 points, which brought her 14th place among slalom skiers, while Zrinka Ljutić finished with 50 points as the 30th among the best slalom skiers in the world.
The skiers will ride the giant slalom in Meribel on Sunday, with the first run at 9:00 and the second at noon. Four more skiers have a chance to win the small Crystal Globe: Sweden's Sara Hector (522 points), France's Tessa Worley (517), America's Mikaela Shiffrin (471), and Slovakia's Petra Vlhova (431). Croatia will not have a representative in the last race of the World Cup this season.
To read more about sports in Croatia, follow TCN’s dedicated page.