Olympics
With her 91st World Cup victory on Saturday in the Downhill at St. Moritz, Switzerland, ski racer Mikaela Shiffrin has marked her 100th career victory. Aside from her 91 FIS World Cup victories, Shiffrin has won two Olympic Gold medals in the Slalom in Sochi, Russia, in 2014 and the Giant Slalom in PyeongChang, South Korea, in 2018, as well as seven FIS World Championships. She won Gold in the Slalom at the World Championships in 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019, where the Team USA skier also won the Super-G. In 2021 she won the Combined and in 2023 the Giant Slalom.
Shiffrin won her first World Cup race in December 2012 at age 17, in Slalom in Åre, Sweden, where she also marked her 87th World Cup victory in March 2023. The 87th World Cup victory was important as it marked the new record for most career World Cup victories in Alpine skiing, which had been held until then by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark. Stenmark had held that record for almost 40 years with 86 victories until Mikaela Shiffrin surpassed the Swedish ski veteran. She ended the 22/23 FIS World Cup season with a total of 88 World Cup victories and has kicked off the 23/24 season steadily expanding on her record.
What records are left for Shiffrin to break, one might wonder. The 28-year-old currently holds five FIS Alpine World Cup season titles and the women’s record is six, held by Annemarie Moser Pröll from Austria. Moser-Pröll won the Overall Season World Cup title in 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, and 1979. The season titles are calculated by adding the FIS points from each of the six Alpine disciplines, Downhill, Super-G, Giant Slalom, Slalom, Parallel, and Combined. Mikaela Shiffrin had the most points in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023, earning her the coveted large Crystal Globe.
The record for most FIS Alpine World Cup titles for men is held by Austria’s Marcel Hirscher, who won the large Crystal Globe a total of eight times: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
There are also a few records left to break in terms of World Cup victories. While Shiffrin holds the record for Alpine skiing with 91 victories, there are winter sport athletes who have more World Cup victories in other skiing disciplines: Switzerland’s Amélie Reymond for example holds the current record for World Cup victories in any discipline, with 164 FIS World Cup victories in Telemark Skiing, and fellow country-woman Conny Kissling has won 106 FIS World Cup victories in Freestyle skiing.
Retired American ski racer Lindsey Vonn had aimed to go for 100 World Cup victories, but a slew of knee injuries forced her to retire before coming close to this goal. So while not a new record, the symbolic number of 100 World Cup victories is certainly attainable by Shiffrin, even though the skier has stated in the past that these numbers were not that important to her.
Irrespective of any records and trophies, it will be exciting to watch Shiffrin ski this season. She has left an indelible mark on the ski world at a very young age and will be remembered as the most successful skier of all time.
