Mikaela Shiffrin heads to North America in search of her 100th win

GURGL, Austria – Mikaela Shiffrin heads to North America in search of her 100th career World Cup victory.

The American ski star could even get the only win she needs for the milestone, in a race that is like a home race for her in Killington, Vermont, which includes a giant slalom and a slalom next weekend.

“I guess it’s not impossible, but so many things have to work out,” Shiffrin said Saturday in the Austrian Alps after claiming her record-breaking 99th victory.

Shiffrin, a Colorado native, honed her skills at Burke Mountain Academy near Killington.

“From the outside it looks easy, or it looks like it’s supposed to happen. But, like today, it takes so much energy to bring out my top skiing, so it’s certainly not easy,” the American said of approaching the breakthrough victory on home snow.

After the events in Killington, the 16-day North American portion of the World Cup continues with two giant slaloms in Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, and a super-G in Beaver Creek, Colorado.

“I guess there’s a little bit of pressure, but I’ll try to ignore that,” said Shiffrin, who won the season’s first slalom a week ago in Levi, Finland. “Anyway, it will be wonderful if it happens. If it doesn’t happen, there’s nothing to complain about on the whole. But I hope to put in a really good performance in front of my home crowd.”

No other skier, man or woman, has won more than 86 World Cup races. Shiffrin set the record when she overtook the Swedish star Ingemar Stenmark in March 2023.

Shiffrin has triumphed in the last six slaloms she has competed in, including all four since her return from a knee injury following a downhill accident in January.

On Saturday, the two-time Olympic champion defended her lead in the first run, beating Italian prodigy Lara Colturi, who competes for Albania, by 0.55 seconds and Swiss skier Camille Rast by 0.57 seconds. Both achieved their first podium result in their careers.

In the first run, Shiffrin did not make any mistakes before the steep slope of the Kirchenkar track, but was able to gain time on all competitors with an almost mistake-free section towards the end.

“It’s a pretty strange surface, cold and dry. It’s difficult to stay clean on skis. So I felt a little uneasy at some points,” Shiffrin said. “But in the end I kept pushing forward, just stayed on top and fought until the finish. I find it a real challenge in these conditions to find the right setup to have a clean feel and the feeling of being able to unleash the skis.”

Shiffrin admitted before the start of her second run that she was “very nervous at the front.”

“I wasn’t sure how I would feel on the surface. It was getting darker and darker. Sometimes when I’m unsure about the feeling under my feet, I take too much time trying to make the turn,” she said.

“I could hear all the women going down and their teams cheering, and that always means they were having a really good run. And it got darker,” Shiffrin said, adding she doesn’t think “that’s happening today.”

Shiffrin initially extended her lead to more than seven tenths of a second and only lost a fraction of it in the last two sections.

“It feels really satisfying to have a really great run down this slope. What a wonderful day,” she said.

Sharing the podium with two young competitors who achieved her first top-three finish reminded Shiffrin of the time she achieved her first career podium – in a slalom at another Austrian venue, Lienz, in December 2011 .

“It was incredible with Marlies (Raich) and Tina (Maze),” recalled Shiffrin, who started this race with bib number 40 but finished third. “It was such a special feeling, like, ‘Oh my God, I’m here, and I should be here, and I belong here.’ It’s just the beginning of your career and the future knows no limits. That’s just a wonderful feeling.

Swiss skier Wendy Holdener, who was second after the opening run, fell to fourth, and Shiffrin’s teammate Paula Moltzan was 1.10 seconds behind in sixth.

Olympic champion Petra Vlhova, Shiffrin’s biggest competitor in slalom, has not returned to racing after knee surgery last season.

Gurgl was a new venue for the Women’s World Cup after a men’s race was held there last season. The resort in the Austrian Alps is just 15 kilometers from Sölden, where the traditional season opener took place four weeks ago.

The men will compete in a slalom on the same hill on Sunday.