Mikaela Shiffrin is changing her race plan slightly for the upcoming season, where she could reach 100 career World Cup victories.
Shiffrin, who won nine races last season to extend her record to 97 Alpine skiing World Cup victories, decided to focus her offseason training on slalom, giant slalom and super-G.
She does not plan to enter any downhills this season, which begins with a GS in Sölden, Austria, on Oct. 26.
Shiffrin, 29, has raced slalom and giant slalom since making her World Cup debut in 2011. She added some super-Gs and downhills starting in 2015, carefully deciding which of those speed races to enter over the last decade to not disrupt her slalom and GS. She raced at least one downhill in each of the last nine seasons save 2020-21.
On Thursday, Shiffrin explained her downhill decision for 2024-25, speaking on the media day for her ski sponsor, Atomic. She cited the difficulties of balancing training for all four events.
In summer 2023, she had great downhill training, but minimal work in her primary events of slalom and giant slalom and none in super-G due to poor weather conditions.
She won the season’s first downhill on Dec. 9, then focused on the other three events.
She didn’t touch her downhill skis again until her second downhill race week of the season in late January in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. She then crashed in that second downhill. She sprained left leg ligaments and was sidelined for an 11-race stretch.
“I sort of didn’t have enough preparation prior to Cortina to really ski the way I wanted to ski,” Shiffrin said.
She returned in March and won her last two races, both slaloms, and still led all women with nine victories on the season.
“Obviously, I had that crash, and that spurred us to just kind of consider what’s the most effective way for me to train and prepare for these races?” she said. “Ideally, I want to be racing more speed.
“When I was talking with my team last year, they were like, look, we are trying, but it’s sort of physically impossible for you to get the preparation to be in winning shape in every event. With the weather patterns the way they have been lately, it’s really unpredictable and really hard to plan where to go, and you normally aren’t training at the same places for tech (GS and slalom) as you are for speed (downhill and super-G), so you’re sacrificing something always.
“That’s when we came up with this idea of trying to target super-G. Downhill just takes so much time. One race takes three to four days with training runs.”
After ideal prep this past summer, she hopes to race all but two or three of the nine scheduled World Cup super-Gs this season. She will reassess her strategy for downhill and super-G afterward.
“I don’t want to believe it (last January) would be my last downhill race, because I love it so much, but it’s not my priority,” she said.
Two seasons ago, Shiffrin broke the Alpine World Cup career wins record of 86 accumulated by Swede Ingemar Stenmark in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Now, she is three wins away from becoming the second athlete in any Winter Olympic sport to reach 100 career World Cup victories. Retired Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen won 114 times.
Shiffrin said that her team and the Share Winter Foundation are working on a campaign for win No. 100, if it happens, to help bring visibility and greater access to snow sports.
“It (the number 100) doesn’t have significance to me, personally. It’s the same as it was with 86. It’s not a goal that I set out to achieve, and that hasn’t really changed,” she said. “However, if I’m in good shape, and if it does happen, I do see it as quite a really big opportunity to sort of bolster all the stories that are happening in ski racing right now. There’s so much to be excited about, and so many stories in the sport, even beyond my own.”
The first seven races this season are all in Shiffrin’s best events of giant slalom and slalom. If Shiffrin wins one or two of the first three races, she will have a chance at win No. 100 in the U.S. at the Thanksgiving weekend World Cup stop in Killington, Vermont.
Two weeks after that, Shiffrin can race in her home state of Colorado for the first time since 2017.
Beaver Creek, which annually hosts men’s races, is also a women’s World Cup stop this season for the first time since 2013. Shiffrin is targeting the super-G on Dec. 15.
The biennial world championships are in February in Saalbach, Austria. Then the World Cup Finals in March are in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Shiffrin said she doesn’t have specific goals for the season. Her “guiding star,” though, is the World Cup overall title, which is determined by adding points from results in all 37 World Cup races across downhill, super-G, GS and slalom.
Shiffrin has won the overall five times, which is one shy of the female record set by Austrian Annemarie Moser-Pröll in the 1970s.
“I used to have all sorts of goals I could list, like overall globe, GS (season title) globe, slalom globe, winning at home, all these things,” she said. “Now I’m just like, do the best I can. Hopefully that includes some victories, and we’ll see.”
Over the offseason, Shiffrin got engaged to Norwegian Alpine skier Aleksander Aamodt Kilde. She spoke Thursday en route to seeing him for the first time in almost three months.
Kilde, 32, is working his way back from a Jan. 13 downhill race crash that caused a severe right leg laceration and dislocated left shoulder. Kilde needed more shoulder surgery over the summer due to an infection.
Shiffrin said Kilde can do “light movement” now. He can’t do physically straining workouts yet.
“He’s incredible, his mentality, his patience with the process,” she said, noting that Kilde if finishing up an eight-week online real estate and economics course. “He handles it. He takes it in stride. He takes it step by step. He finds things to do that help him create structure.”
