With less than 48 hours to go before the FIS Alpine World Cup season opener at Sölden, Austria, it’s time to look at what lies ahead this season for the greatest Alpine skier of all time. Mikaela Shiffrin is the world’s most winningest Alpine ski racer, with 97 World Cup victories to her name. The 100-mark is in sight, and 2024-25 is promising to be one of the most exciting seasons of all time. Aside from Shiffrin just three victories away from clinching the 100th World Cup victory, several injured and retired ski racers are returning to the circuit, pushing the level of competition to an all-time high.
Shiffrin never likes to talk about specific goals or milestones. Her goal is to win, the 29-year-old said at the Atomic Media Day in Salzburg, Austria, on October 10. “That’s it,” America’s darling chuckled, “Ski fast enough to win races.” She makes it sound and look so easy, but what’s behind that simple goal is a multitude of factors, from training, talent, grit, and determination, to almost a lifetime of skiing with Atomic. Shiffrin has been on Atomic racing skis since she was 12. “This brand feels like a family; it’s a true partnership, not just a sponsorship. It’s been a key foundation of my career.”
While her skis have not changed, Shiffrin has undergone some reshuffling in her coaching team in recent years. In March 2023, Karin Harjo was hired as the new head coach for Shiffrin’s team, which is separate from the rest of the U.S. women’s ski team. In addition, in April 2024, Janne Haarala joined Team Shiffrin from Norway’s women’s technical team. Haarala hails from Finland, where he was the head coach for 3 years prior to his 6-year stint with the Norwegian tech women. “He’s been awesome,” Shiffrin said about Haarala, “He’s been a really positive influence on the team. He’s a great balance with Karin.”
More importantly, these changes have led to a refocus on Shiffrin’s core strengths: Slalom and Giant Slalom. The American ski racer has won 60 of her 97 World Cup victories in Slalom and 22 in Giant Slalom. Shiffrin started out her career with these tech disciplines, competing in Slalom and Giant Slalom only for the first four years of her career, but then added Super-G in 2015-16 and Downhill in 2016-17. Ultimately, the team around Shiffrin decided this season that she was overstretching herself, “So this prep block, I’ve been focusing (and) just cut out Downhill entirely,” Shiffrin shared in an interview with AFP Sports. Shiffrin admits that trying to compete across all four Alpine disciplines was too much and “potentially setting me up for a little bit of failure… and at some point, we end up sacrificing quality”.
“It’s also not to say that downhill is entirely out of my future. It’s just kind of a shift for this season about where I want to focus and see how that goes. So I’m still kind of keeping my mentality in the pot if you will.”
— Mikaela Shiffrin
The decision to forego Downhill this season is not surprising after Shiffrin’s crash at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, last season. Shiffrin had crashed on the Downhill course Trofana di Olympia in Cortina in January 2024, overstretching a tendon in her knee, which forced her to pause for 44 days in the middle of the FIS World Cup. “The crash itself is not the reason, but rather an impetus for a reflection process about my training schedule,” explained Shiffrin.
The injury resulted in Shiffrin missing out on too many races and, with, it the chance to defend her 2022-23 Overall Season title. The Big Crystal Globe instead went to Switzerland’s Lara Gut-Behrami. Reclaiming the Overall Season title from Gut-Behrami, which Shiffrin has won a total of five times in her career, will certainly be a key motivator for the American. Winning her sixth Overall Season trophy would make her an equal record winner with Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Pröll. Cutting your weakest discipline in favor of the strongest is a strategy Shiffrin’s arch-rival Lara Gut-Behrami has been perfecting for seven seasons. Like Shiffrin, Gut-Behrami is an all-rounder who has competed across all four Alpine disciplines. However, the Swiss skier decided after the 2016-17 season to drop Slalom skiing, her weakest discipline, in favor of the other three events. Gut-Behrami has won a total of 45 World Cup races, of which almost half were in her strongest discipline, Super-G. Shiffrin sees Gut-Behrami as one of her most fierce opponents for the upcoming season. The other main rivals are Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova in Slalom skiing as well as Italy’s Federica Brignone for the Overall Season title, which Brignone snatched from Shiffrin in 2019-20.
The event Shiffrin is most excited about for the upcoming season is the race weekend in Beaver Creek, Colorado, on December 14-15, 2024. It will be only the second time in history that the Birds of Prey course will host women’s World Cup races. Previously, Beaver Creek held an unscheduled Super-G in December 2011, when Val d’Isère, France, could not host the women’s Super-G due to lack of snow. Legendary ski racer Lindsey Vonn won the event at Beaver Creek and is said to be making a comeback to the Birds of Prey course as a forerunner this coming December. The Birds of Prey Course was built in 1997 for the 1999 World Alpine Ski Championships. The race course was designed by Swiss Olympic Downhill gold medalist Bernhard Russi. The course starts west of the top of Chair #8 and finishes at the bottom of Red Tail at the confluence of Chairs #10 and #11. The course features a vertical drop of 2,470 feet (757 meters) and contains an average gradient of 31%, with a maximum of 63%. During the 1999 World Championships, the Birds of Prey race course hosted only the men’s speed events, while the women’s events were held at nearby Vail.
This coming weekend will be an exciting season opener at Sölden, featuring the women’s Giant Slalom race on Saturday and the men’s Giant Slalom race on Sunday. It will be the 31st time Sölden is hosting the FIS Alpine World Cup. Last year, the women’s event was won by Lara Gut-Behrami, tying her for the most successful female skier in Sölden with retired Slovenian ski racer Tina Maze who also has three victories to her name. Shiffrin has won the Giant Slalom at Sölden twice, in 2014 and 2021. A victory by Shiffrin this weekend would tie her with Gut-Behrami and Maze for most victories, whhile a victory by Gut-Behrami would make the Swiss skier the most successful female skier on the Rettenbach Glacier. Their strongest competition comes from Federica Brignone, who has finished second in three of her past five races in Sölden, having won the race at Sölden in 2015. Other recent victors on that course include Alice Robinson, who in 2019 became the youngest victor in Sölden with her first career World Cup victory at 17 years. Shiffrin will have her work cut out for her, and she admits to always taking time at the start of the season to find her rhythm again. Ultimately, every athlete will invariably find themselves in the same boat as Shiffrin, so we are looking forward to an exciting first race weekend in Austria.
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