By: Nick Zaccardi | NBC Sports
Mikaela Shiffrin has earned a record-extending 100th career Alpine skiing World Cup win, coming back from major injury to join a short list of athletes across all winter sports with triple-digit victories.
Shiffrin won a slalom by 61 hundredths of a second over Croatian Zrinka Ljutic combining times from two runs in Sestriere, Italy, on Sunday.
Minnesotan Paula Moltzan took third. It’s the third time of Shiffrin’s record-tying 155 career Alpine World Cup podiums that she’s joined by another American.
Shiffrin crossed the finish line and took multiple glances in the direction of a scoreboard before dropping down and lying on the snow. Moltzan helped her up, and they hugged
“I didn’t know if it said fourth or first. One hundred times later, and I still can’t find the darn scoreboard,” Shiffrin told media in Sestriere. “My feeling is blank a little bit. It’s overwhelming. It’s too hard to find thoughts for it. But that’s also a very peaceful moment because normally I’m only thinking. So sometimes it’s nice to have a moment where I can’t think.”
After a podium ceremony, a 60-second highlight video was shown of Shiffrin’s celebrations and victory interview clips over her career.
An interviewer then said, “After all you’ve been through these last months, 100 World Cup victories.” Shiffrin, through tears, thanked her, thanked her teammates, thanked her competitors, her coaches and the fans.
Shiffrin returned to the top in her sixth race back since missing two months following a Nov. 30 race crash. She sustained a puncture wound that tore oblique muscles and came very close to piercing organs. Shiffrin had been bidding for win No. 100 in that Nov. 30 giant slalom, leading after the first run before crashing in the second run.
“I have wondered in the last weeks so many times whether it is the right thing to come back,” she said. “We didn’t take the easy way, that’s for sure, but in the end, in order to keep moving forward and to finish this recovery, I have to be in start gate, and I have to experience these emotions when they’re good and when they’re bad. That’s really important. Today was just an amazing day in the middle of some really tough months, but I’m very thankful for this day.”
Shiffrin returned to competition Jan. 30 and placed 10th and fifth in her first two slaloms back (plus won the World Championships team combined with Breezy Johnson with the third-fastest slalom run).
She skipped the giant slalom at the World Championships, citing mental obstacles specific to GS coming back from the Nov. 30 crash. She returned to GS racing in Sestriere on Friday and Saturday.
“I do not yet feel entirely myself…but I do feel enough of myself to be here…and for now, that is enough,” she posted before her first GS races back.
On Friday, she placed 25th. On Saturday, she was 33rd in the opening GS run, not qualifying for the 30-skier second run for the first time since 2012 (when she was 17 years old, two months before her first World Cup win). She then trained slalom.
Then on Sunday, she had the fastest opening slalom run by nine hundredths over Ljutic. She was fourth-fastest in the second run skiing on battered snow as the 30th and final starter.
“I’m not there (in GS),” she said. “I feel like the mountain ahead of me to climb is steep and long, and if I get there, when I get there, it will be very sweet. For now, I just have to take this day and be grateful for it because it’s a small moment in the middle of many tough moments that makes me feel that maybe I can be good again.”
Shiffrin is commemorating No. 100 by partnering with Share Winter Foundation to raise $100,000 for learn to ski and snowboard programs for youth who otherwise would not have access to the sports.
“I know that not everyone is blessed with the good fortune I have come across; in fact, very few are, and over the years, the lack of accessibility for a diverse group of people in winter sports has funneled us into a very not diverse community,” Shiffrin said in a press release. “I see this 100 victory conversation as an opportunity to bring more eyes and, ideally, more passion to the sport. It’s incredible, of course, but I’d like to turn the spotlight to something bigger than me.
“Helping Share Winter bring more kids to the mountain is really meaningful. It’s far bigger than me winning 100 races. This will make that 100th victory one of the most meaningful to me.”
Over the last 12 years, Shiffrin has dealt with a range of hardships, both physical and mental, and returned to the top of podiums each time.
“This is probably the last moment that I would expect to achieve this, actually” she told Swiss broadcaster SRF. “It seems like even returning from injury, and in the last years of my career, there’s always expectation that I’m going to be on the top step. And for me, when I look around at the other athletes, at my competitors, it sometimes seems impossible that I can win these races. They’re so strong.”
In March 2023, she broke Swede Ingemar Stenmark’s Alpine record of 86 World Cup wins. Now she has reached a 100-victory milestone that few athletes have achieved across all winter sports World Cups.
Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen won 114 individual World Cup races before retiring in 2018 with a record 15 Winter Olympic medals.
Swiss skier Conny Kissling won 106 times in the 1980s and early 1990s, with most of the victories coming in an event combining moguls and aerials (which, separately, are Olympic disciplines) and acro or ballet (which is not an Olympic discipline).
Swiss Amelie Wagner-Reymond earned 164 World Cup victories from 2007-23 in telemark skiing, which is not an Olympic discipline.
Shiffrin reached 100 before her 30th birthday on March 13 by starting her tally early, dominating slalom for most of the last 12 years (63 World Cup slalom victories are 28 more than any other woman in history) and also winning the most giant slaloms in women’s World Cup history (22). She stayed relatively injury-free in a high-risk sport until two crashes in 2024.
The women’s Alpine skiing World Cup continues next weekend with two downhills and a super-G in Kvitfjell, Norway. Shiffrin is next expected to race the following weekend in Are, Sweden.
“Just to stand in the start gate and take the mentality (of) what I want to do is what I actually do, that’s not been totally connected (recently), but today it was,” Shiffrin said, “and that feels good for the soul.”