Mikaela Shiffrin crossed the finish line, looked up at the board and fell to the snow. Nearly three months after a much worse kind of fall cost her a large chunk of her season and put history on hold, this one was celebratory.
The American Alpine skiing star on Sunday won the 100th World Cup race of her storied career, topping the podium in a slalom in Sestriere, Italy, less than a month after she returned from an injury that kept her out of competition for 60 days and slowed her march toward history.
Shiffrin led after the first run and won in a combined 1:50.33, 0.61 seconds ahead of Croatia’s Zrinka Ljutić. Fellow American Paula Moltzan took third, 0.64 back. It’s the fifth career World Cup podium for Moltzan, who won giant slalom bronze at the world championships 10 days ago.
“I think it’s pretty special to share it with Paula,” Shiffrin said after the race. “I could hear everybody cheering from the start when she went, and I thought, ‘OK, it’s like a day of training. We just keep pushing.’ … It made it achievable.”
Mikaela Shiffrin and Paula Moltzan celebrate Sunday’s podium finishes in the World Cup slalom race in Sestriere, Italy. (Marco Bertorello / AFP via Getty Images)
No other Alpine skier has hit 100 World Cup wins. Shiffrin became the sport’s all-time leader in March 2023, passing Ingemar Stenmark’s previous mark of 86. She’s now tied with Stenmark for the most World Cup podiums in Alpine skiing history (155).
Shiffrin nearly hit this milestone on Nov. 30. Sitting on 99 wins, she was leading a giant slalom race in Killington, Vt., and looked poised to achieve the mark on home soil until a hard fall in the second run knocked her out of the race and left her with a puncture wound in her abdomen.
The recovery cost her two months and is still an ongoing process. Shiffrin struggled in two giant slalom races over the weekend in Sestriere, finishing 25th on Friday and failing to qualify for the second run on Saturday. She’s had trouble reacclimating to the faster discipline, and she pulled out of the giant slalom at world championships earlier this month, citing “mental obstacles” in the wake of her crash.
But she’s found her slalom form quickly.
When she returned to the World Cup tour in January, she finished 10th in slalom in Courchevel, France, which served as her only tune-up before worlds.
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At worlds, she paired with American teammate Breezy Johnson in the team combined event, skiing the day’s third-best slalom leg to clinch gold. In the individual slalom last weekend, Shiffrin missed a record-breaking 16th world championship medal by 0.05 seconds.
On Sunday, she was in control from the start, posting the day’s best time of 53.79 in the initial run. That made her the last skier to go in the second run, and she turned in the fourth-best time, keeping well ahead of the pace the whole run as she came down the hill.
“A lot of things had to go right in my direction for this to happen,” she said. “In the end, I did something right too.”
The win puts Shiffrin right back to where she was before the injuries — winning World Cup slaloms. She topped the podium in each of the year’s first two slalom races — in Levi, Finland, and Gurgl, Austria — in November before her crash in Killington. Shiffrin is sixth in the overall slalom standings, despite missing three races while injured with two more slalom events before the season ends next month at the World Cup finals.
As Shiffrin sat in the winner’s chair, overcome with emotion and soaking in the scene, she tried to sum up the unexpected three-month effort to get back to this point.
“Everybody’s been so nice and so supportive, all of my teammates and competitors and coaches and the whole World Cup,” she said. “And I’m so grateful, thank you.”
Just then, a cheer rose from the crowd.
“And the fans,” she added with a smile, “thank you. Thank you so much.”
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(Top photo of Shiffrin: Marco Bertorello / AFP via Getty Images)
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