Mikaela Shiffrin claimed her 70th World Cup victory on Saturday when she prevailed in a thrilling giant slalom duel with Lara Gut-Behrami in the opening race of the Olympic alpine skiing season. American Shiffrin, who is the 2018 Olympic champion in the discipline, clocked a combined total 2 minutes 7.22 seconds under sunny Austrian skies in Soelden. World champion Gut-Behrami led Shiffrin two two-hundredth after the first run, and by one-hundredth at the final split but the Swiss eventually missed a first giant slalom World Cup win since Soelden 2016 by .14 of a second. Defending overall Worl…