The 27-year-old has been closing in on her predecessor's record of 82 race victories, with tonight's win taking her up to 81.

Sweden's Ingmar Stenmark's all-time record is 86 wins in men's competition.

In a hectic two rounds, Shiffrin was one of the 23 skiers to make it down the slope twice, taking the lead after the first run in a time of 48.93sec, beating Anna Swenn Larsson of Sweden and long-time slalom adversary Petra Vlhová from Slovakia.

Some potential challengers such as Swedish giant slalom Olympic champion Sara Hector skied out in the first run, while Germany's Lena Dürr did not qualify for a second run.

On run two, Katharina Liensberger of Austria made an error after finishing fourth on the first run, meaning she was last of the finishers.

Canadian Laurence St-Germain was the last of the 30 second-run qualifiers, but ended up with the quickest second run to place 14th.

Marta Rosetti from Italy and Slovenian Neja Dvornik were next quickest, moving up the standings to 19th and 17th respectively, ahead of Switzerland's Michelle Gisin, who struggled to 21st.

Further up the order, Vlhová was consistent enough to take the lead with a time of 1min 37.18sec, a time that could not be bettered by Swenn Larsson who made a major mistake to end hopes of stopping Shiffrin, ultimately finishing third in 1:37.63 just in front of Wendy Holdener from Switzerland.

However, Shiffrin showed her quality again, near matching the times of Rosetti and Dvornik to finish in 1:36.42, 0.76sec in front of Vlhová.

Shiffrin's first opportunity of equalling Vonn's record will come tomorrow when there is another slalom due to take place in the Croatian resort.