United States alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin reached a historic milestone on Sunday, winning her 100th World Cup race at the slalom event in Sestriere, Italy. Shiffrin, 29, is the first skier — male or female — to achieve triple-digit victories in World Cup races.
Shiffrin — who hit the slopes for the first time since a serious crash in November that left her with severe oblique trauma and a deep puncture wound — was racing in her favored slalom event. She finished 0.61 seconds ahead of Zrinka Ljutic, with Shiffrin’s U.S. teammate, Paula Moltzan, finishing in third.
Additionally, Shiffrin also tied a World Cup record for men and women, as her 155th career top-3 finish matched Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark (she surpassed Stenmark’s record of 86 World Cup race wins in March 2023; earlier that same year, Shiffrin overtook Lindsey Vonn’s record 82 World Cup victories for a female skier).
Shiffrin said after the race: “Everybody’s been so nice and so supportive. All of my teammates and competitors and coaches and the whole World Cup and I’m so grateful, thank you. And the fans, thank you so much … I think it’s pretty special to share it with Paula, my teammate. I could hear everybody cheering from the start when she went and I thought, ‘OK, it’s like a day of training, it’s like we just keep pushing,’ and she pushes and I push and I made it achievable.”
Shiffrin’s historic win came nearly three months after she suffered a puncture wound in her left oblique resulting from a crash during a giant slalom race in Killington, Vermont. As early as two weeks ago, she withdrew from the World Alpine Skiing Championships in Saalbach, Austria, citing post-traumatic stress disorder from her November crash, posting on Instagram at the time: “Honestly, I really didn’t anticipate experiencing so much of this kind of mental/PTSD struggle in GS from my injury in Killington. Like always, I tried diving into the challenge, hoping to get there by Worlds. I figured my passion and longing to compete would outweigh the mental barriers. Maybe that will be the case over time, but I’m not there yet. Coming to terms with how much fear I have doing an event that I loved so dearly only 2 months ago has been soul-crushing.”
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