Paula Moltzan earns long-awaited first Alpine skiing World Cup win to open season

American skier Paula Moltzan, 32, secured her first Alpine skiing World Cup victory after a decade-long wait. The season-opening giant slalom event took place in Soelden, Austria, where Moltzan overtook Albanian Lara Colturi in the final sprint, crossing the finish line just one hundredth of a second ahead. Moltzan expressed her awe with the remark, "It feels like a fairytale right now, pretty unreal."

The 2012 World Cup debut for Moltzan saw her languishing in either second or third place for a decade before Saturday's triumph. Prior to her win, Moltzan had previously recorded just 10 second- or third-place finishes on the World Cup circuit. Following her Olympic bronze medal win in February, Moltzan switched to the Van Deer ski team, founded by eight-time World Cup overall champion Marcel Hirscher, and the move seems to have paid off handsomely. She holds the record as the oldest woman to claim her first World Cup victory.

Mikaela Shiffrin, the American skiing sensation, set the pace with the fastest opening run, 14 hundredths of a second ahead of Swede Sara Hector. However, Shiffrin's stellar start was not enough to maintain her momentum as she finished 27th in the second run, ultimately placing seventh overall in the competition. The men's giant slalom race is scheduled for the following days at 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. ET, streaming live on Peacock.