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≡ SPOTLIGHT ≡
The 2024-25 alpine skiing season will open on Saturday with the annual Giant Slalom down the Rettenbach Glacier near Soelden, Austria, and American superstar Mikaela Shiffrin ready to go, with history in front of her once again.
She was on her way to a sixth seasonal World Cup title until a bad knee injury during a crash on the downhill course at Cortina d’Ampezzo last January sidelined her for six weeks. She won the season’s final Slalom race on 16 March and still finished third overall for the season.
Now rested and recovered, she is ready to re-write the record books once again in her 14th season on the World Cup tour:
● Shiffrin is the all-time leader in World Cup wins – men or women – with 97, and can reach 100 by the end of the year (in fact, by the end of November).
● Shiffrin has 152 career World Cup podiums – 97 wins, 27 silvers and 28 bronzes – and is within three of tying Swede Ingemar Stenmark (1973-89) for the most ever at 155.
● Shiffrin has won five seasonal women’s World Cup titles, one shy of the women’s record of six by Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Proell, from 1969-1980.
● Shiffrin has won the most Slaloms ever – men or women – (60) and the most Giant Slaloms ever among women (22). Every win this season will extend those records.
She’s still only 29, but in a bid to try and better maintain her health, she has decided to skip Downhills this season and concentrate on her Slalom and Giant Slalom specialties, plus the Super-G speed race.
“My prep has been great this season, and this is just such a stark contrast to last year, where we fought and struggled with the weather all through the entire summer and the fall,” she said on Wednesday in a season-opening news conference.
“This year, I’ve had a pretty significant amount of really solid training in slalom, GS, and super-G, and that has been great.”
On her decision to skip the Downhill, she explained:
“I’m actually pretty excited because you’ve all heard me talk about is juggling training for every discipline, and it’s always a struggle.
“It’s always a challenge to find the timing to really train Slalom and GS, which have always been my priorities, but then Super-G and Downhill I love, they feed my soul.
“We kind of had to reevaluate after Cortina and say, ‘What are we doing here that is potentially setting me up for a little bit of failure?’ And one of those things is really trying to juggle every event.
“At some point we ended up sacrificing quality. I feel like these last couple of years my Super-G hasn’t been where I wanted it to be.
“This prep block, I cut out downhill entirely, focus on the Super-G training, try to get the combination of the Downhill speed skills and the technical GS skills and put that back together, and we’ll see where that takes us this season.”
She’s aiming to be at a high level right from the season start and then accelerate into the 2025 World Championships in Saalbach (AUT) next February.
Shiffren has repeatedly said she is not motivated by records, but she appreciates the attention it brings to skiing:
“I feel energized when I feel like other people bring energy to the sport. Bringing energy to the sport is never a bad thing, whether you want to talk about records or statistics or really anything.
“I’m feeling right now energized when people bring up 100 [wins] and I think it’s incredible that people are still following along this journey and are excited about it. I would say that’s an incredible positive.”
She won’t be the only history-maker in Soelden, as the men’s World Cup will see the return of Marcel Hirscher, the all-time leader in seasonal World Cup titles with eight between 2007-19. Retired for five years, he will now ski for the Netherlands, the homeland of his mother, Sylvia.
Hirscher, 35, ranks second behind Stenmark in men’s World Cup wins with 67, 31 in Giant Slalom and 32 in Slalom. He and everyone else on the men’s side will be chasing after Swiss star Marco Odermatt, who has won the last three seasonal World Cups, and owns Soelden wins in 2022 and 2023.
Then there is the question of American speed star Lindsey Vonn, now 40, who has hinted at a racing comeback after retiring due to injuries in the 2018-19 season. She’s won 82 World Cup races in all from 2001-19, 43 in Downhills and 28 in Super-Gs, and has been rumored to race in Soelden.
But the entries for Saturday’s women’s races won’t be confirmed until Friday. But it looks like this will be a busy pre-Olympic season on the slopes, including for Shiffrin as she expands her entry in the all-time skiing record book.
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