Alpine skiing | For Mikaela Shiffrin, place now in the record of Ingemar Stenmark

(Munich) After overtaking her compatriot Lindsey Vonn, the American Mikaela Shiffrin, 84 victories on the clock in the World Cup, can now tackle the greatest skier of all time, the Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark and his 86 successes.

As of this weekend, in the Czech resort of Spindleruv Mlyn, close to the Slovakia of its rival Petra Vlhova, Mikaela Shiffrin has two slaloms with a first opportunity to join the legend of Ingemar Stenmark, “the very incarnation of skiing of competition” according to the native of Vermont.

“Stenmark, I didn’t meet him or only very briefly. His legacy is simply that he is the very embodiment of ski racing. As soon as you start getting interested in skiing, you know Stenmark. I don’t think I’m able to top that,” Shiffrin said Wednesday night after his giant slalom double at Kronplatz in northern Italy.

“I understand why people are interested in records, I like to talk about it, but when I’m at the start of a race, I don’t think about it for a second,” added Shiffrin.

At 27, the question is no longer really whether the skier from Vail (Colorado) will outnumber Stenmark, but when she will, as she once again dominates alpine skiing this winter.

As in its heyday during the 2018-2019 season, when it had scored 17 successes in one season, the benchmark brand (the Swiss Vreni Schneider had stopped at 14, the Austrians Hermann Maier and Marcel Hirscher as well as Stenmark to 13).

“Enough” with ten wins

“For this season, I told myself that four, five or maybe six wins was the maximum possible, and that it would be a great season”, she slipped into the Eurosport microphone on Wednesday, believing that with her ten wins, “that was enough, I don’t need more”.

But she also admits that she likes the way she’s been skiing lately so much that she wants to keep pushing herself after a frustrating Olympic season that ended without a podium in Beijing a year ago.

Between tight stakes this season, she has won four of the seven races contested, and only at home in Killington, Vermont, she has not taken one of the top two places.

In this technical discipline, the competition has widened, and from a duel between Shiffrin and Vlhova, we have moved on to a four-way confrontation, since the Swedish Anna Swenn Larsson and the Swiss Wendy Holdener are now regularly involved in the fight for victory.

At the current pace of her season, Shiffrin, whose fifth large crystal globe is reaching out to her, could also tickle another reference brand in alpine skiing: the 2,414 points scored over a season by the Slovenian Tina Maze, a true all-rounder, in 2013. In 2019, Shiffrin had stopped at 2204 points.

The American is just under 900 points short (currently 1517 points) and thirteen races still on the program. But seven are up to speed (three downhills and two super-Gs), which the American is no longer automatically skiing this winter (only two stages in Saint-Moritz in Switzerland and Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy, dead ends in Lake Louise in Canada and in Sankt-Anton in Austria).

It also remains to be seen in what physical and mental state Shiffrin will return from the World Championships in Méribel/Courchevel (February 6-19), where she will try to win a fifth title in slalom, and a first in giant slalom.