The World Cup Ski season is over. Lindsey Vonn made international headlines by mounting her comeback after five years out of international competition. It’s a great story where Vonn got a partial knee replacement and felt so good that she started competing again in January. Vonn ended strong with a second-place finish in Sun Valley, Idaho, which gives the 40-year-old momentum for her stated goal of Olympic gold in 2026 at Milan Cortina.
Shiffrin closes season with 101st win
Vonn is one of skiing’s greatest, with five World Cup All-Around titles and 82 wins, but the comeback would need to last years if she was going to approach fellow American Mikaela Shiffrin, who notched her 101th World Cup victory on March 27 in Sun Valley for the World Cup’s final races of the year. Thirty years old and still in her prime, Shiffrin endured spotty results (for her) this season due to injuries caused by a crash in November. She missed two months of racing. Still, she placed fourth in the slalom year-end standings, winning four of the six World Cup races she competed in.
Vonn calls it
Long before Shiffrin passed her in win totals, Vonn predicted 2022 that Shiffrin would be greatest, saying “[Mikaela] is the best skier that has ever lived in my eyes. She will break my record of World Cup wins very quickly and will become the greatest skier in history.” That has all come to pass, with Shiffrin surpassing Ingemar Stenmark’s 86 victories.
Groundbreaking from the start
Shiffrin made her World Cup debut at the age of 15 in 2011. Since then, she has amassed an impressive list of accomplishments. While slalom is her strongest event, Shiffrin’s versatility across different disciplines includes giant slalom, super-G and downhill, setting her apart from many of her peers. Shiffrin has won five Overall World Cup titles, showcasing her dominance and success in all four racing categories.
She has competed in three Winter Olympics (2014, 2018, and 2022), winning two gold medals and one silver. Her gold medal in slalom at the 2014 Sochi Olympics made her the youngest slalom gold medalist in Olympic history. Despite facing challenges and setbacks, such as not finishing three of her six events at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Shiffrin’s resilience and ability to bounce back have been inspiring.