American teenager Mikaela Shiffrin became the youngest ever Olympic slalom champion despite a near fall Friday under floodlights at Rosa Khutor.
"This has been a dream of mine for a very long time," said Shiffrin, who is 18 years and 345 days.
"I'm so happy to be in this position, and I couldn't be happier."
A slight error saw the American briefly go down on the icy snow, her lead on Schild falling from 1.19sec to 0.59sec by the second split, but the teenager gritted her teeth and came up with a smooth bottom section to nail a deserved gold.