From the same Minnesota hill that produced Lindsey Vonn, Paula Moltzan wins bronze at ski worlds

SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM, Austria — Finishing fourth when medals are on the line can feel like cruel punishment.

Paula Moltzan knows the feeling all too well.

Already at this year’s Alpine skiing world championships, she was on the U.S. squad that finished fourth in the mixed team parallel event. Then she couldn’t hold on to the lead that partner Lauren Macuga had set up in the downhill portion of the new team combined event and ended up fourth with her slalom run.

Also on the U.S. team that finished fourth in the team parallel at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Moltzan’s only major medal had been a victory with the U.S. team in the same event at the last worlds two years ago.

Until Thursday, when Moltzan took the bronze medal in giant slalom for her first individual medal at this level, finishing a mere hundredth of a second ahead of Thea Louise Stjernesund of Norway — in a race won by Federica Brignone of Italy.

“It’s feeling pretty special right now,” Moltzan said. “Ski racing big time comes down to the hundredths of a second. And so to be on the right side on a big stage feels pretty amazing. And to share it with my family and my husband and my whole team is unmatched.”

Moltzan was third in the opening run held in bright sunshine and then maintained her position in fading light during the second run. Knowing immediately that she had earned a medal, the Minnesota native pumped her arms up and down, threw her hands on top of her helmet in apparent disbelief and waved to her cheering squad in the stands decked out in USA hockey jerseys with Moltzan’s name on the back.

“That’s my mom and my dad and my mother-in-law, my father-in-law. And then our two really good friends from Vermont and then my agent,” Moltzan said.

Of course, there was one other special person enjoying the medal, too: Husband Ryan Mooney, who is Moltzan’s ski technician and unofficial coach, eventually skied down from the start and took part in the post-race podium celebration.

Long regarded as the U.S. women’s team’s second-best technical skier behind Mikaela Shiffrin, Moltzan’s medal came in a race that Shiffrin sat out as defending champion while still recovering her giant slalom form and mental state following a crash in November.

Moltzan also finished third in the final World Cup giant slalom before the worlds. She had a string of solid results entering the last worlds, too, only to break her hand again while helping the Americans win the team event — which led to a DNF (did not finish) in giant slalom and forced her to sit out the slalom, which has traditionally been her best event.

Moltzan won gold in slalom at the junior worlds a decade ago but then lost her spot on the U.S. team a year later because of poor results.

So she enrolled at the University of Vermont and won the NCAA slalom title a year later. While still at UVM in 2018, she finished 17th in the World Cup slalom down the road at Killington, giving her enough World Cup points to head back over to Europe and resume World Cup racing.

Only she still wasn’t part of the U.S. team, meaning that she and then-boyfriend Mooney had to raise $50,000 on their own to travel and compete across the Alps.

“I definitely have an unconventional story,” Moltzan said. “But I’m proud of every step of it and it feels good to add this to the list of accomplishments I have.”

Both of Moltzan’s parents were ski instructors at Buck Hill in Minnesota and Moltzan moved into the elite program led there by Lindsey Vonn’s former coach, Erich Sailer, when she was 12.

Now she’s established herself as a contender for a medal at next year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics, with Vonn also planning to compete at the age of 41.

Moltzan became the fourth American woman to earn a medal at this year’s worlds, after Macuga’s bronze in the super-G, Breezy Johnson’s downhill victory and gold for Johnson and Shiffrin in team combined.

“The women’s U.S. Ski Team right now is extremely strong in both tech and speed, and it feels like everything is just kind of working off each other,” Moltzan said. “You watch the speed girls compete and their passion and their speed and you just feel like, ’OK, well, I don’t want to be the athlete or the team that doesn’t medal today.’ And obviously we’re missing Mikaela Shiffrin here. But I think even without her, we are a very strong team in GS.”

Shiffrin will be back for Saturday’s slalom — as will Moltzan — with both chasing their second medal of the championships.

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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing