High Points: The GOAT

The young skier had the rap down following her race through the gates on Aspen Mountain.

“I had a great weekend. I had so much fun here. It was a beautiful, awesome slope. It was challenging because I’m just trying to establish myself as a competitive racer with all these other guys. All in all, I’m psyched to be home. I love racing this hill. It’s been great.”

It was late November 2012, and the then 17-year-old Mikaela Shiffrin had just posted a strong seventh place finish with a solid second run in the Nature Valley Aspen Winternational. The precocious skier had yet to make it to the top step of a World Cup podium, but it seemed it would be just a matter of time. Three weeks later, she won her first World Cup race in Åre, Sweden.

Since then, she has been on that top step 99 times.

This past Sunday, as you have probably heard, she won her 100^th World Cup race: the slalom in Sestriere, Italy. She became the first Alpine skier to reach triple digits in career victories, and she has won 14 more races than the man who is in second place, Ingemar Stenmark.

In her sport, she is the undisputed greatest of all-time, and in the pantheon of American sports champions, she can take her seat at the table with Jordan, Brady, Ruth, and Gretsky — although, I guess Gretsky is Canadian. And she is not done yet.

Like all great champions, Shiffrin’s story is multi-layered. There have been times of utter dominance such as the World Cup in 2015 here in Aspen when she won a pair of slalom events. That November weekend, she crushed the field to win a race by 3.07 seconds — still the largest-ever winning margin in a women’s World Cup slalom. Then, the next day, she won once again in a second slalom, this time by 2.65 seconds.

But much of what makes her accomplishments so compelling is that she has consistently overcome travails and tragedy to reach this moment. Her win in Sestriere came in a season in which a crash at Killington, Vermont, took her out of competition for two months after she punctured her stomach. She came back to win #100 after surgery to ward off infection in mid-December. Last season, she injured her knee in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in January but came back six weeks later to win her 60^th slalom title and 97^th World Cup event in March.

Incredible.  

And who can forget her epic fall from grace as the face of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games in February of 2022. She entered those Games with expectations that she might become the first American skier to win three gold medals in a single Olympics.

It did not work out that way.

With great fanfare, she failed to finish three of the six events she started. Rather than a worldwide television moment featuring her standing with a gold medal around her neck, the enduring image was of Mikaela sitting in the snow after she DNF-ed at the top of the hill in the slalom — the race that was her specialty. Perhaps worse than the sting of not skiing her best was the social-media onslaught that followed. She addressed her distress in an Instagram post, and many thought she would never achieve the kind of results she has had since.

All of that followed the tragic passing of her father, Jeff Shiffrin, who died in February 2020 after an accident at the family home in Colorado while she was at a Sports Illustrated photo shoot. At the time, she questioned whether skiing was “worth it.”

Yes, it has been a once-in-generation career, and we who ski have all been inspired by not just by Shiffrin’s skills, but also by her dogged determination and unconquerable spirit as well. On March 11, she will celebrate her 30^th birthday. It is hard to believe she has accomplished so much at such a young age.

In less than a year, on Wednesday, Feb. 18, in Cortina, Italy, the second run of the Women’s Olympic slalom is scheduled to be held. Don’t be surprised if Mikaela Shiffrin finds herself, once again, on the top step of the podium.