Mikaela Shiffrin, 4-for-4 in slalom to start Olympic year, gets 105th World Cup win

American Alpine skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin continued her unbeaten run to start the World Cup slalom campaign, winning the night event Tuesday in Courchevel, France, her fourth victory in four tries since the season began last month.

Once again, Shiffrin was in a world of her own on the slalom slope, winning by 1.55 seconds in a total time of 1 minute, 42.50 seconds. All four of her wins have come by more than 1.2 seconds, three of them by over 1.5 seconds — huge margins in the short slalom races.

Switzerland’s Camille Rast took second. Germany’s Emma Aicher finished in third, 1.71 back.

In her typical fashion, Shiffrin was blistering fast in the first leg, finishing in 49.77 seconds to put a massive gap between her and the field. She led by 0.83 seconds over second-place Rast and was over a full second clear of everyone else. Only seven skiers were within 2.2 seconds of her after the opening run.

When her turn came to cap off the night’s second run, she nearly doubled her lead as she crossed the finish line to clinch the win.

“I’m just pushing, I don’t know,” Shiffrin said on FIS TV of the winning streak. “I’m not asking questions. I don’t know, sometimes you just gotta take it and roll with it.”

It’s the fifth straight World Cup win in slalom for Shiffrin, including last year’s final race in Sun Valley, Idaho, in March, as she stamps her place as the dominant favorite in the sport’s most technical discipline ahead of the 2026 Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

The win also extended her record haul of World Cup race victories to 105, 19 clear of second-place Ingemar Stenmark, the Swedish great who won 86 on the men’s tour between 1975 and 1989. On Friday, American Lindsey Vonn won her 83rd World Cup race, which ranks third on the all-time list. The win was Shiffrin’s 68th win in slalom — that event alone has brought her more overall World Cup wins than anyone else besides Stenmark and Vonn.

It was in Courchevel last January when Shiffrin made her return from a serious injury that kept her out of competition for two months. She finished 10th that day, just happy to be back on the slopes. Eleven months later, she’s back on top of the slalom world.

Shiffrin is looking for an Olympic bounce-back as well. At the 2022 Beijing Games, she competed in all seven events but failed to medal in any of them. She has said she intends to focus on just her best events, the slalom and giant slalom, at these Olympics. She also plans to compete in the team combined, which features a downhill leg and a slalom leg.

Shiffrin’s injury happened during a giant slalom — longer and faster than the slalom — in Killington, Vt. She’s still building her way back to top form in that event, in which she’s a 22-time World Cup winner. Her best giant slalom finish so far this season is a pair of fourth-place finishes.

She also left the door open to trying the even faster super-G at the Olympics. She raced one of those last weekend at the World Cup stop in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and was on track to post a solid time, but she skied out on the second-to-last gate. It was her first World Cup super-G in two years.

“Lock in this feeling,” she said of the win Tuesday. “I have some work I want to accomplish with (giant slalom). The super-G was such a positive step, so I want to get some training there too. But it’s time for a little bit of recovery as well after the last nine weeks.”

The women’s Alpine skiing competition begins Feb. 8. Shiffrin’s first race would likely be Feb. 10, in the team combined. The slalom is scheduled for Feb. 18.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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