Only five days after her 22nd birthday, Mikaela Shiffrin won the overall World Cup Title on Friday.

Mikaela is only the 5th American to ever win the World Cup Overall Title (the World Cup began in 1967).

Mikaela Shiffrin is the future of ski racing.  Let me put that into perspective for you:

• Mikaela Shiffrin is only 22 years old and has ALREADY WON 31 world cup races.
• Lindsey Vonn has the most World Cup wins of any woman in history with 77 World Cup victories at 32 years old.
• When Lindsey Vonn was 22, she had only ever won 4 World Cup races.  Mikaela has won 27 more races than Vonn had at 22…
• Mikaela is on pace to SHATTER Lindsey Vonns record.
• The most World Cup races won by anyone is Ingemar Stenmark with 86 – Mikaela is on track to shatter his record as well…

Mikaela finished the 2016/17 with 11 World Cup victories.  She was number one overall, number one overall in slalom, number 2 overall in GS (will be decided today, she could still win this racing today), 36th overall in downhill, and 6th overall in the combined events.  Mikaela has a long shot chance to win the GS overall today.

Mikaela wins a lot because her technique is flawless.  Her upper body doesn’t move.  Ski race aficionados love to watch her race.

video of Miki doing her best Taylor Swift impression last week on her 22nd birthday

Mikaela won the Overall Title  in a weird way…  Ilka Stuhec was the only woman with a mathematical chance of beating Mikaela and Ilka decided not to enter Saturday’s race.

Mikaela was napping when her mom woke her up and told her the news about Ilka.

“My mom walked into my room, I had just woken up from a nap, and she said, ‘Oh, congratulations, the overall is yours.’  I said, ‘No, not yet.’ That’s what I’ve been saying, ‘It’s not mine yet.’ She said, ‘No, Ilka decided not to ski the slalom, so it’s yours.’ It didn’t seem like a real thing. It’s odd to say I won something in ski racing when I wasn’t actually out on the hill, so it feels a little more real today.” – Mikaela told the Denver Post yesterday

Mikaela started racing in the World Cup at 16 years old and won her first World Cup Slalom race at 17 and won four more Slalom races that first season.

AMERICANS WHO HAVE WON THE WORLD CUP OVERALL TITLE:

These are the American who have won the Overall World Cup Title, which years they won, and how many races they won that year.

Phil Mahre

• 1981, six
• 1982, eight
• 1983, six

Tamara McKinney

• 1983, seven

Bode Miller

• 2005, seven
• 2008, six

Lindsey Vonn

• 2008, six
• 2009, nine
• 2010, 11
• 2012, 12

Mikaela Shiffrin

• 2017, 11