Mikaela Shiffrin ties Alpine skiing World Cup wins record

Since before this season started, Mikaela Shiffrin eschewed talk about the career World Cup wins record of 86, which has stood since 1989, believing it was too far away. Shiffrin, who began the October-to-March campaign with 74 wins, dismissed any chase storylines while racking up victories at her best clip since her record 17-win season in 2018-19.

Shiffrin remained pessimistic about catching Ingemar Stenmark this season, through breaking Lindsey Vonn‘s female wins record of 82 in January, becoming the most decorated skier in modern world championships history in February and last week clinching a fifth World Cup overall title, which crowns the world’s best all-around Alpine skier.

Nor did she waver in the minutes before her deciding run of Friday’s giant slalom in Åre, Sweden, a venue that carries so much career significance for her.

For the first time in her career, Shiffrin said she scanned live race results from the contenders who went before her. It wasn’t about learning how much of a lead she’d carry into her run after having the fastest first run by 58 hundredths of a second.

Rather, she was doing the math to learn whether or not she had clinched the season title in the GS.

The numbers spit out that Shiffrin had clinched the GS title — which she called her third “dream” for the season, after the overall and slalom titles; again note no mention of wins records. An emotion fell over Shiffrin as she readied for one of the defining runs of her career. I have nothing to lose.

“I have everything that I can gain from this if I just take a little bit of extra risk,” she later told Austrian broadcaster ORF.

Shiffrin was sixth-fastest in the second run, and it was enough to prevail by 64 hundredths over Italian Federica