Mikaela Shiffrin claimed her 70th career victory on Saturday when she prevailed in a thrilling giant slalom duel with Lara Gut-Behrami in the opening race of the alpine skiing World Cup season. American Shiffrin, who is the Olympic champion in the discipline, clocked a combined 2 minutes 7.22 seconds from two runs under sunny Austrian skies in Soelden. World champ Gut-Behrami led Shiffrin two two-hundredth after the first run, and by one-hundredth at the final split but the Swiss eventually had to settle for second, .14 off the pace. Defending overall World Cup champ Petra Vlhova of Slovakia c…