Mikaela Shiffrin has done quite a lot in only 12 years. Shiffrin raced to a record-breaking 83rd win on Tuesday in her 238th race on the World Cup circuit. Shiffrin won a giant slalom in Italy to move ahead of former United States teammate Lindsey Vonn.
Shiffrin also has won two Olympic gold medals and six world championship titles. Shiffrin’s racing career on the World Cup circuit started two days before her 16th birthday in March 2011 in the Czech Republic. She will still be only 30 when the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics roll around. Women’s races are scheduled for the Italian resort where she won four medals at the 2021 world championships.
From a prodigiously talented 15-year-old to the most decorated female skier of all-time, Mikaela Shiffrin has done quite a lot in only 12 years.
The American skier won her record-breaking 83rd victory Tuesday in her 238th race on the World Cup circuit, the globe-trotting competition for the best skiers on the planet.
Shiffrin, who broke a tie with former teammate Lindsey Vonn by winning a giant slalom in Italy, has also won two Olympic gold medals and one silver, plus six world championship titles and five more medals from that biennial competition.
But it is her World Cup career — and now her pursuit of Ingemar Stenmark’s once mythical total of 86 wins — that has made her one of the greatest skiers in history.
World Cup
Shiffrin’s racing career on the World Cup circuit started two days before her 16th birthday in March 2011 in the Czech Republic. Wearing bib No. 46 in a giant slalom, she finished outside the top 30, meaning she didn’t qualify for a second run.
Her first slalom, the discipline she would come to dominate with 51 victories, was the next day and again she finished outside the top 30.
Shiffrin’s first podium came in December 2011. Wearing bib No. 40, she was third behind ski greats Marlies Schild, a childhood idol, and Tina Maze.
The first of her 83 wins came one year later in Are, Sweden, on Dec. 20, 2012.
Incredibly, Shiffrin won the World Cup slalom title that season, adding two more wins before a dramatic World Cup Finals race in Lenzerheide, Switzerland.
A spectacular second run overhauled a 1.17-second lead by Maze, who had a record-setting season but was left distraught after losing to a rival who turned 18 three days earlier.
Shiffrin won five season-long World Cup slalom titles in six seasons. The streak was broken after a December 2015 injury in Are during race warmups.
The inevitable first overall World Cup title came at the age of 22 in the 2016-17 season when Shiffrin won 11 races.
It was the start of three straight titles. The next season included a first downhill win in Lake Louise, Canada — in only her fourth start.
Shiffrin won a record 17 races in 2019, tallied 2,204 World Cup points — second only to Maze in skiing history — and got top-five places in all but one of her 26 events.
Olympics
At 18, Shiffrin stepped on the Olympic stage like she belonged there.
A fifth-place finish in the giant slalom at the 2014 Sochi Games preceded a dominating wire-to-wire win in slalom. Shiffrin finished more than a half-second ahead of Schild, the best slalom skier in the world at the time.
Four years later in Pyeongchang, Shiffrin took gold in giant slalom a day before her fourth-place finish in slalom. She later took silver in Alpine combined.
World Championships
Shiffrin’s first worlds-level race was at the 2011 juniors in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, when she was still only 15. Racing in slalom with a cold, she placed third behind two rivals both four years older.
Starting in 2013, Shiffrin won four straight world titles in slalom. The streak ended with bronze in 2021 in Cortina, but she took home four medals from that event, including gold in Alpine combined.
The combined was her sixth world title. In total, she has 11 medals from 13 events at the worlds. The other two results were top-10 finishes in giant slalom as a teenager.