Staying awake might be Mikaela Shiffrin's biggest challenge as she prepares to try to set a record for women's World Cup skiing victories.
Having poured out her emotions after matching Lindsey Vonn with career win No. 82 in an early morning giant slalom in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, on Sunday, Shiffrin now needs to refocus, regain her energy and shift her sleeping patterns in time for a slalom to be held under the lights in Flachau, Austria, on Tuesday. "It's tough," she said. "If I have a good first run then I don't start until 9:45 [p.m.
local] in the second run and normally I'm well asleep by then. So, we have to change the whole rhythm again." It's the opposite of how Shiffrin went from an evening race in Zagreb, Croatia, last week to the earlier starting times in Slovenia.
But Shiffrin has learned throughout her extraordinary career how to deal with just these types of challenges, as displayed when she recently won five consecutive races across three different disciplines -- super-G, giant slalom and slalom -- at three different resorts.