Shiffrin ties record for most World Cup wins in a single season

EagleVail’s Mikaela Shiffrin picked up her record-tying 14^th win of the World Cup season on Tuesday, claiming a city event parallel slalom in Stockholm, Sweden, to lock down the season slalom title and all but wrap up the overall World Cup globe.

Shiffrin tied retired Swiss great Vreni Schneider for the most wins in a single World Cup season – man or woman – and has several more chances to break the record with her astounding 15^th win of the season before the World Cup finals in March.

Shiffrin is coming off a three-medal performance, including two golds, at the 2019 World Alpine Ski Championships in Are, Sweden. Her gold in slalom was the record-setting fourth straight in a single discipline – something never before accomplished by any World Cup ski racer.

The overall title would be Shiffrin’s third straight and only one behind the all-time American record of four overall titles held by retired racer Lindsey Vonn of Vail.

Shiffrin beat Germany’s Christina Geiger in both of their runs to take the final by 0.27 seconds.

The win gave Shiffrin an insurmountable 203-point lead over her closest challenger in slalom, Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova.

Vlhova went out in the quarterfinals. Anna Svenn Larsson of Sweden, skiing on home snow, wound up third in the event.

The win was the 57^th of Shiffrin’s career at the age of just 23. She is only five victories from tying retired Austrian legend Annemarie Moser-Proell for second on the all-time women’s list with 62.

Vonn tops that list with 82 career wins.

Shiffrin on Tuesday was still suffering the lingering effects of a chest cold she battled through for last week’s world championship slalom win, according to the Associated Press.

“I skied as well as I could. Even if I was healthy, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do better. Now I have some time to really recover,” Shiffrin told the AP.

Shiffrin said she will sit out the speed events in Crans Montana, Switzerland, this coming weekend and Sochi, Russia, the following week before returning March 8-9 for technical events in Spindleruv Mlyn in Czech Republic, where she debuted in 2011 at age 15.

Then the World Cup Finals will be held in Andorra the following week. Between the Czech races and Andorra that’s a total of two each slalom and giant slalom races, Shiffrin’s strength.

However, she’s excelled in speed as well this season, already winning the super-G globe. But Crans Montana only features downhill races, and Russia will be a mix of downhill and super-G.