Copper captures Macuga’s knee, catapults Shiffrin to top

Pictured here, Park City's Lauren Macuga skiing into 4th place during the Women’s World Cup Downhill at the Stifel Birds of Prey on December 14, 2024 in Beaver Creek, Colorado. Unfortunately a year later now, back in Colorado at Copper, she blew her knee out in a training run for a World Cup. Photo: @dustinsatloff // @usskiteam

COPPER, Colo. — Mikaela Shiffrin of the Stifel U.S. Ski Team pulled off yet another home win over Thanksgiving weekend, this time at Copper Mountain, Colorado at the Stifel Copper Cup. Just 30 minutes away from her home in Edwards and in front of thousands of screaming fans, Shiffrin took her 104th World Cup win by more than 1.5 seconds.

“With the home crowd, there’s some extra pressure that comes with it. But I’m also trying to enjoy myself,” said Shiffrin to U.S. Ski & Snowboard. “Every race is a different new mentality and a new way to practice and I think the best thing that I can do is just get the exposure and keep working on it. It all came together today.”

It was Shiffrin’s 67th slalom win, and her fourth straight slalom race—having won in Sun Valley at the 2025 Stifel Sun Valley Finals in March, then Levi, Finland and Gurgl, Austria. Out of the 17 domestic slalom World Cup races that Shiffrin has competed in since 2011, she has won 12 of them.

 

 

 

 

 

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Beloved Park City athlete Lauren Macuga posted the following video of her training crash in Copper in which, frustratingly to her, her friends, family, and fans she’s sustained a season-ending knee injury tearing her ACL.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Lauren Macuga (@lauren_macuga)

Recognizing her exciting potential to have represented the USA in the Milan Cortina Olympics, the IOC knew this was noteable and made mention of the incident.

Annika Hunt from Park City did not qualify for a second run. Elisabeth Bocock of Salt Lake City was well on her way to qualify for second runs with a fast first run, but had trouble right near the finish line and DNFed.  

Behind Shiffrin, Lena Duerr of Germany took second place and Lara Colturi of Albania third. Duerr also won the Stifel HERoic Cup—a $10,000 prize for the top woman between all U.S. World Cups, provided by Stifel Financial. Between Duerr’s sixth-place finish in the Stifel Copper Cup giant slalom and second place in the slalom, she beat Shiffrin by just two points.