Mikaela Shiffrin won her 83rd career World Cup race Tuesday to break Lindsey Vonn’s all-time record for a female skier. Shiffrin, 27, won the giant slalom in Kronplatz, Italy, over Swiss skier Lara Gut-Behrami by 0.45 seconds to take the mantle atop the record books.
Shiffrin was almost speechless immediately after breaking Vonn’s record.
“I don’t know if I can add something,” she said. “It might take me a little bit to figure out what to say.”
Shiffrin debuted as a professional two days before she turned 16 and became the youngest American skier to win a national alpine title in 2011. She went on to dominate the slalom event — wracking up 51 wins over her 12-season career. Shiffrin also won 18 giant slalom races over that span, including Tuesday’s victory.
She’s competed in three Olympics as well and won three medals: gold in slalom at the 2014 games in Sochi, gold in giant slalom at the 2018 games in PyeongChang and silver in combined (downhill and slalom) in 2018. Shiffrin didn’t place in any of her three events at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
Now that the women’s record is behind her, Shiffrin needs just three more wins to tie and four wins to break the all-time record for any gender set by Swedish skier Ingemar Stenmark. He set the mark in 1989 with his 86th win when he was 32 years old.
When asked about his record possibly being broken, Stenmark stated he believed Shiffrin “will win more than 100” races.
“And it doesn’t make me sad at all,” he told the Olympics Channel in a recent interview.
Shriffin’s rise is impressive given she won 83 races in just 238 starts. Vonn, meanwhile, Vonn won her 82 races in 395 starts — though a few of her seasons were shortened by injuries. There are seven more races left on Shiffrin’s schedule this season, including three this week, in which she could build on her record and careen towards Stenmark’s.
Source: Mikaela Shiffrin breaks Lindsey Vonn’s women’s alpine skiing World Cup wins record
