She is the undisputed queen of skiing and she is approaching a kingdom that was thought to be inaccessible to humans sliding on the snow: the legendary mark of one hundred World Cup victories. This Saturday, the American Mikaela Shiffrin won her 99th success by winning the Gurgl slalom in Austria. She was an ultra-favorite and she never trembled.
In the first round, Shiffrin, who started in first position, completed the course in 51″08 to finish just ahead of Swiss Wendy Holdener (+13 hundredths). The Austrian Katharina Liensberger set the third time, 52 hundredths behind the American.
In the second round, she resisted the pressure from the Albanian Lara Colturi, who had been in the lead for a long time and who had the first podium of her career. While experienced, Shiffron managed his second round intelligently. And in 1′40″22, she raises her arms for the 99th time.
At 29 years old, Mikaela Shiffrin can reach the symbolic milestone of 100 successes next week, in her country and in front of her audience, in Killington in the United States.
Shiffrin, double Olympic champion in 2014 and 2018, had already broken the record for victories among women (82) held by her compatriot Lindsey Vonn. And in the process, the record in all categories, held by the Swedish legend of the 1980s, Ingemar Stenmark (86). Many predicted that she would be the first to see a hundred successes. This prospect seems even clearer since the injury of Shiffrin’s main rival, the Slovak Petra Vlhova, who is not expected to return to competition for several weeks.
Note that this Sunday, the French Olympic slalom champion Clément Noël, relieved to have returned to victory after 22 months of drought last week in Finland, will want to confirm his good form on the same Gurgl track for his second slalom race. winter. By maintaining the “liberated” state of mind which allowed him to return to the summits.
