Mikaela Shiffrin claimed skiing’s all-time World Cup wins record for herself this year, but, being Mikaela Shiffrin, she is probably looking into ways she can share it. Shiffrin is the most accomplished of skiers and rarest of superstars: As incomparable as she is on the slopes, she seems to go out of her way to show she is like the rest of us.
When her father died, she grieved publicly and admitted it affected her ability to perform. At the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, she followed one disastrous run after another with a media therapy session. In November, at Levi in Finland, rival Petra Vlhová built a seemingly insurmountable lead with her first run in a World Cup slalom event but straddled a gate in her second, gifting the win to Shiffrin. Shiffrin called it “a little bittersweet. . . . In my mind, she earned this victory, and I’m quite lucky to have it.”
Cold-blooded, she is not. That is what makes Shiffrin’s achievements so extraordinary. Outrageous expectations make her uneasy, and doubt is her most permanent companion. Yet she still finds a way to dominate.
