By Shauna Farnell Mikaela Shiffrin has proven she can dominate in every discipline of ski racing, but as has been the case with all the accomplishments of young career, she’s not getting a big head about it.
While everyone around her is talking about how she’s the only skier in history to win a World Cup race in all six existing disciplines (slalom, giant slalom, downhill, combined, parallel slalom and after Sunday’s victory in Lake Louise, Alberta, also super G), she is quick to point out the practicality of the newly broken record.
“It’s an honor to be mentioned in the same sentence as some of the all-time greatest skiers — that’s very flattering. But in some ways I don’t think it’s comparable,” Shiffrin said on a conference call from Switzerland on Wednesday, Dec. 5, where she is preparing for upcoming World Cup races this weekend in St. Moritz. “Me being able to be the only winner in all events comes with the asterisk that the city event wasn’t even an event when a lot of these guys were setting their records.”
Inspired by Bode
Only a handful of racers in history have been able to win in every race discipline before the “city event” (aka parallel slalom) was factored in, the most recent of those being Slovenian Tina Maze and also Bode Miller, who Shiffrin names as her key role model in mastering every type of alpine course.
“Bode Miller was one of my biggest inspirations all through growing up,” Shiffrin said. “He inspired me to pursue my goals and dreams in ski racing. The athletes who were able to switch from slalom one weekend and then go to speed races and bring style and (speed) in everything they did was so inspiring to me.”
Slalom was Shiffrin’s key focus when she started out on the World Cup in 2011-12, a focus that has resulted in five World Cup slalom globes, three FIS Alpine World Ski Championship golds and becoming the youngest Olympic slalom champion in history at age 18. She narrowly missed the medals in slalom at last year’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, (winning gold in giant slalom and silver in combined) and handily won the first slalom of the 2018-19 season last month in Levi, Finland. It was her 34th victory in the discipline, meaning she is closing in and likely to usurp all-time most winning women’s slalom skier Marlies Schild, who had 35 wins. But in Shiffrin’s mind, regardless of how many more wins she gets, Schild will always be the best.
“All signs point to the fact that I’ll probably break the slalom record this season. If that does happen, OK … on paper, I’ll hold the record. But for me, she will always be the greatest ever slalom skier. She pioneered her own style of slalom skiing. She made it possible for me to ski slalom the way I do,” Shiffrin said.
Also, 23-year-old Shiffrin, who clinched the World Cup overall title the last two seasons, has not-so-secretly been working …read more
Via:: Vail Daily