Alpine skiing-Vlhova wins Slovakia's first Alpine gold with slalom victory

YANQING, China :Petra Vlhova won Slovakia's first Olympic Alpine skiing gold medal on Wednesday with victory in a tight women's slalom race on the 'Ice River' course at the Beijing Games.

Vlhova had an 0.08 advantage over silver medallist Katharina Liensberger of Austria with Switzerland's Wendy Holdener in the bronze medal position just a further four hundredths behind.

Germany's Lena Duerr had been fastest after the first run but narrowly missed out on the podium, finishing fourth after her second run was 0.91 slower than Vlhova.

There was just 0.22 seconds between the winner and fifth-placed Andreja Slokar of Slovenia.

American Mikaela Shiffrin, the four-time slalom world champion, failed to finish her first run - after also crashing out of the giant slalom on Monday.

Vlhova is the defending overall World Cup champion and current World Cup slalom leader but this is her first Olympic medal.

The Slovak had been in eighth place after the first leg but delivered a near perfect run to take top spot.

"I gave everything I had and at the end I am Olympic champion," she said.

"It's difficult to say what it means to me right now. I have been dreaming all my life to win an Olympics or just to have medals.

"I have a lot of emotions right now, inside of me. This season I was really strong and today I gave everything," she added.

(Reporting by Simon Evans, Editing by Peter Rutherford)