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≡ ALPINE WORLD CUP ≡
American skiing superstar Mikaela Shiffrin makes history almost every time she put on her skis and did it again on Saturday with a win in the Slalom at Gurgl (AUT).
It’s her 99th career World Cup win, extending her own World Cup record for the most victories ever.
As usual, she got off to a hot start, recording the fastest first run at 51.08, 0.13 up on Wendy Holdener (SUI), the 2018 Olympic Slalom silver medalist.
That placed Shiffrin as the 30th racer for the second run and she needed a 49.68 time to win the event. No problem; she had the fifth-fastest run on the field at 49.14 and had a two-run total of 1:40.22 to win easily from surprising 18-year-old Albanian Lara Colturi (1:40.77) – who won her first World Cup medal – and Camilla Rast (SUI: 1:40.79). Holdener ended up fourth.
Shiffrin said afterwards she had her doubts at the start of the second run:
“I was really nervous on the top. I could hear all the women going down and their teams were cheering and that always means they had a really good run. And it was getting darker and I was like … I don’t think it’s happening today.
“I knew all the struggles I would have, or challenges and I tried to push anyway.”
She did and now has the chance to reach 100 career World Cup wins – she passed Sweden Ingemar Stenmark’s former record of 86 wins in March 2023 – in front of American fans at next week’s races at Killington, Vermont, with a Giant Slalom on Saturday and a Slalom on Sunday. She knows it will not be easy:
“It’s not impossible, but so many things have to go right. I think from outside it looks it looks easy, or it looks like it’s supposed to happen this way, but even today took so much energy to bring out my top skiing.
“So, it’s not easy, and everybody’s pushing and catching up. And so, I’m not taking that for granted.”
But Shiffrin has won the Slalom six times in Killington, in 2016-17-18-19-21-23, so she will be favored. And at just 29, she has averaged more than eight wins a year in her career so far:
● 2013: 4
● 2014: 5
● 2015: 6
● 2016: 5
● 2017: 11
● 2018: 12
● 2019: 17
● 2020: 6
● 2021: 3
● 2022: 5
● 2023: 14
● 2024: 9
● 2025: 2
Getting to 100 next week might simply be another milestone to putting the record for World Cup wins away for decades.
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