Mikaela Shiffrin is on the verge of making alpine skiing history | CBC Sports

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Last week in Austria, American alpine skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin won World Cup races on three consecutive days. The remarkable hat trick ran her winning streak to four and lifted her career World Cup victory total to 80. That’s just two shy of American Lindsey Vonn’s all-time women’s record and six away from the any-gender record held by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark.

Given Shiffrin’s relative youth (she’s 27) and her knack for avoiding serious injuries in a sport where horrific crashes are considered almost part of the job, it seems inevitable that she’ll one day surpass Stenmark. That day is likely to come before the end of this season, which runs until mid-March.

Shiffrin isn’t as strong in the other disciplines, but her 14 total victories in the downhill, super-G, combined and parallel slalom (a head-to-head version of her best event) have helped her capture four World Cup overall titles. Swiss great Annemarie Proell (6) is the only woman with more, and Shiffrin is poised to grab her second overall crown in a row after winning six of her 12 races so far this season.

Her current dominance might be surprising to anyone who witnessed Shiffrin’s performance at the 2022 Winter Olympics, where she fell in three of her individual events and didn’t come near the podium in the other two. After the U.S. placed fourth in the mixed team competition, Shiffrin left Beijing without a medal, failing to add to the pair of gold and one silver she collected in the two previous Games.

Shiffrin’s struggles in Beijing marked the end of a blue period triggered by the sudden death of her father in early 2020. Before that tragedy derailed her life on and off the hill, Shiffrin had captured three consecutive World Cup overall titles, three straight slalom crowns and two other crystal globes as a season champion in giant slalom and super-G. After Beijing, Shiffrin took the overall title back from her rival Petra Vlhová, and this season Shiffrin is on track to reclaim the slalom crown from the Slovak as well.

You can watch Shiffrin continue her pursuit of Vonn and Stenmark on the all-time World Cup wins list when she competes in Wednesday’s women’s slalom in Croatia. CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem are streaming the first run live at 6:30 a.m. ET and the decisive second run at 10:30 a.m. ET.