In late 2012, all-time greatness began at night in Åre, Sweden. Mikaela Shiffrin remembers that it was dark, that she reminded herself to race into the light, and that, when light snow fell, the flakes glistened in the floodlights.
She’ll never forget the snowflakes, nor that moment, before her second slalom run, when she looked up into the trees and watched them fall. “They were coming down like in a picture, like frozen in time,” she says. “And I just remember thinking, This is really, really beautiful.”
She finished that run and waited at the bottom of the mountain. Her competitors flew down, one by one. None grabbed her lead. Shiffrin won. One night. One race. Her first World Cup victory. And the beginning of much more.
