Mikaela Shiffrin ties World Cup record with 35th slalom win

COURCHEVEL, France — Mikaela Shiffrin wrote extra World Cup historical past Saturday, successful a slalom for a girls’s record-equaling thirty fifth profession victory within the self-discipline and fiftieth win general.

Shiffrin prolonged her first-run lead of 0.04 seconds to complete 0.29 away from Petra Vlhova, who has been runner-up to the American star in all three conventional slaloms this season.

Shiffrin tied her childhood idol Marlies Schild of Austria with 35 slalom wins on the World Cup circuit. Schild’s closing slalom victory, in December 2013, was achieved on the age of 32. Shiffrin turns 24 in March.

Shiffrin can be the youngest of the eight skiers, 4 males and 4 girls, to win 50 World Cup races throughout all disciplines. Swedish nice Ingemar Stenmark’s 86 wins is the document.

“It’s so distracting that they provide out these numbers for me,” Shiffrin mentioned in a post-race interview. “I used to be attempting as exhausting as I may to not give attention to that at present.”

Olympic slalom champion Frida Hansdotter was third Saturday, trailing Shiffrin by 0.37.

Shiffrin has received each slalom race since her shock fourth-placed end on the Pyeongchang Olympics in February.

She mentioned she was “possibly a bit fortunate at present” after overcoming a uncommon error early in her first run. Shiffrin misplaced velocity by way of a mixture of gates, however made up time decrease down the Courchevel course to edge forward of Vlhova.

“I don’t know the way I snuck away with the lead within the first run. Petra skied higher than I did,” Shiffrin mentioned.

Shiffrin’s seventh win this season, from simply 11 races began, earned 100 World Cup factors. It prolonged her lead within the general standings to an enormous 501 factors over second-placed Vlhova.

Within the World Cup prize cash desk, Shiffrin’s 351,000 Swiss francs ($352,000) is greater than thrice another lady racer.

Shiffrin and Schild are joined within the document e-book for at the very least one week earlier than the following slalom at Semmering, Austria.

Although now-retired Schild was a pure slalom specialist — gaining solely two World Cup race wins in different disciplines — Shiffrin has already received in each self-discipline.

Shiffrin can be the two-time defending general champion whereas Schild by no means received a large crystal globe for the season-long title.

Their careers overlapped for a few seasons, and Shiffrin beat Schild into the silver-medal place when she received Olympic slalom gold on the 2014 Sochi Winter Video games.