Mikaela Shiffrin Becomes Winningest Alpine Skier Ever, Male or Female
The 27-year-old American won her 87th World Cup race, surpassing Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark for the most of all time
Among Alpine skiers, Mikaela Shiffrin now stands alone.
Shiffrin won a slalom race Saturday for the 87th World Cup victory of her career, surpassing the all-time record of 86 set by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark. She’s now won more races than any other man or woman in Alpine skiing history.
Shiffrin set the all-time mark in Are, Sweden—the site of her first-ever World Cup victory, also a slalom, on Dec. 20, 2012.
In a race sometimes decided by hundredths of a second, Shiffrin won Saturday by nearly a full second, finishing .92 ahead of Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener. Shiffrin then stood atop the podium, hand over heart, and sang as the national anthem played.
“Thank you to my whole team, the whole U.S. team,” she said. “You make it possible, so thank you.”
Shiffrin said she planned to celebrate with her older brother, Taylor, and his wife, who surprised Shiffrin by coming to Sweden.
Saturday’s win continued a spectacular run for the 27-year-old American, who was born in Vail, Colo., to ski-racing parents and has become perhaps the greatest Alpine ski racer of all time.
In January, Shiffrin won her 83rd World Cup race, superseding fellow American Lindsey Vonn to claim the all-time wins total for a female Alpine skier. At the time, Vonn said Shiffrin “will no doubt go far beyond 82…raising the bar for the next generation of American skiers.”
Shiffrin’s pace of victories is unequaled as she set the women’s and men’s wins records faster than the two previous record-holders.
Vonn was 33 years old when she won her 82nd race, and she retired a year later. Stenmark was 32 years old when he notched his 86th and final World Cup victory.
Shiffrin turns 28 years old on Monday.
“Shiffrin is such a great skier with a fantastic technique and really deserves to break my record,” Stenmark said in an email before she surpassed his mark, set in 1989. “I will be happy for her when she does.”
Stenmark added: “She will be the first to reach 100 World Cup victories.”
Shiffrin has excelled even outside her record run. She has three medals across three Olympic Games, and 14 medals at Alpine skiing’s world championships. The international ski federation (FIS) doesn’t count either of those events as World Cup races.
At the world championships, Shiffrin has won 14 medals in 17 starts. That means that each time she steps into the starting gate, she has an 82.4% chance of reaching the podium.
She entered the 2023 season after a productive stint of offseason training, but a realistic view. She knew it was highly unlikely she would repeat her 17-win performance from 2019, and was openly skeptical that she could win nine races to break Vonn’s record this season.
But Shiffrin has surpassed her own expectations, winning an eye-popping 13 World Cup races. She’ll finish the season at the World Cup Finals in Soldeu, Andorra, and plans to enter three races: Thursday’s super-G, followed by the slalom and giant slalom.
Shiffrin’s resurgence this season is all the more remarkable given her disastrous performance at the Beijing Olympics a year ago. A favorite to win multiple medals, Shiffrin won zero. In three of her six races she skidded off course and failed to finish. It was a shocking outcome for a skier who carves turns with the precision of a metronome.
But Shiffrin had an eventful few weeks after the Games that helped her move on. She and her mother, Eileen, had an hours-long lunch with tennis great Roger Federer and his wife at their Swiss home, which helped rejuvenate Shiffrin.
And in May, as she was headed off to a postseason vacation, she received a phone call from a fan that helped her put her Olympic experience in the past. The fan said he thought Shiffrin performed so poorly at the Games because they were her first after the 2020 death of her father. Shiffrin has also had productive sessions with a grief counselor.
Stenmark’s World Cup victories came in two disciplines: 46 in giant slalom, 40 in slalom. Shiffrin also excels in the slalom and giant slalom, but she is the rare skier who can win any style of race.
In 2018, she became the first skier to win World Cup races in all six individual disciplines. Overall in her career, she’s won 53 slaloms, 20 giant slaloms, five super-Gs, five parallels, three downhills and one Alpine combined.