Welcome to to the 40 Club, Mikaela.
Vail’s Mikaela Shiffrin put an exclamation point on her slalom season at Saturday’s World Cup Finals in Soldeu, Andorra, winning the 40th slalom of her career. Only the 24-year-old American and Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark have won 40 slaloms in their careers.
It took Stenmark 13 seasons to accumulate 40 slalom victories, part of his World Cup record 86 wins. Shiffrin is in her ninth season.
WOW!! At @grandvalira, @MikaelaShiffrin grabs the globe, her 16th victory of the season AND her career 40th slalom victory to tie Ingemar Stenmark’s slalom win record. #SoldeuElTarterWCF19 ??? pic.twitter.com/Nw6g71uR2b
— U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team (@usskiteam) March 16, 2019
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She continued her historic pillaging of the World Cup with her 16th win on tour in this season — which doesn’t include two more victories at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in February — coming in ahead of Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener with a time of 1 minute, 48.15 seconds., 7-hundredths of second ahead of Holdner and 1.2 ticks in front of Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova.
The previous record for wins in World Cup season was 14, held by Switzerland’s Vreni Scheider in 1988-89, and Shiffrin took care of that last weekend, with a slalom triumph in Spindleruv Mlyn in the Czech Republic.
Saturday was her 16th win of the season, extending her new record. Perhaps even more startling is that Shiffrin won her 59th World Cup. Only Stenmark (86), Lindsey Vonn (82) and Austria’s Marcel Hirscher (67) have won more races.
Shiffrin trailed Holdener by 0.28 seconds after the first run but flagged down the Swiss racer with a second run that was the only come in fewer than 55 seconds.
This story will be updated.