Mikaela Shiffrin extended her records with a 98th career Alpine skiing World Cup victory and an eighth reindeer for winning the annual slalom in Levi, Finland.
Shiffrin, 29, prevailed by 79 hundredths of a second over Austrian Katharina Liensberger combining times from two runs in the second race of the season on Saturday. She led by a sizable six tenths over German Lena Dürr after the first run.
Shiffrin has won her last five slalom starts dating to last January, her first win streak in the discipline since 2019. She sat out one slalom in February due to leg injuries from a downhill crash.
“Maybe the victory is more special because I saw the northern lights,” this week, she told Swiss broadcaster SRF.
ALPINE SKIING WORLD CUP: Broadcast Schedule
Shiffrin rebounded from this season’s opening race on Oct. 26, when she led a giant slalom after the first run, then had the 27th-fastest second run out of 28 finishers and placed fifth overall.
She has 12 more World Cup wins than any other Alpine skier in history. On Saturday, she matched 1990s German speed skating legend Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann’s total of 98 individual World Cup wins.
The record for all Winter Olympic disciplines is 114 individual World Cup victories — held by Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen, who retired in 2018 as the all-time Winter Olympic medals leader with 15.
Also Saturday, Shiffrin extended her records with an eighth World Cup slalom win at one venue and a World Cup race victory in a 13th consecutive season.
The winner in Levi traditionally receives a reindeer that they get to name. The reindeer stays in Finland. Shiffrin named her previous reindeer: Rudolph, Sven, Mr. Gru, Ingemar, Sunny, Lorax and Grogu.
“You never forget (about the reindeer),” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about it on the run.”
Liensberger, who in 2021 snapped Shiffrin’s streak at four consecutive world championships in slalom, earned her best World Cup result since March 2022.
Dürr, 33, became the oldest woman to make a World Cup slalom podium, breaking the record held by 2018 Olympic champion Frida Hansdotter of Sweden.
The men race a slalom in Levi on Sunday.
The women have another slalom next Saturday in Gurgl, Austria. Regardless of how Shiffrin finishes there, she will have a chance to reach 100 World Cup wins at the following World Cup stop in Killington, Vermont, the state where she attended Burke Mountain Academy as a kid. Killington hosts a giant slalom and a slalom on Nov. 30-Dec. 1.
Shiffrin’s primary slalom rival for the last several years — Olympic gold medalist Petra Vlhova of Slovakia — is sidelined from right knee surgery last winter. Vlhova’s team announced this week that she plans to return to on-snow training by the start of December.
2024 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup Results — Levi
1. Mikaela Shiffrin (USA) -- 1:47.20
2. Katharina Liensberger (AUT) -- +0.79
3. Lena Duerr (GER) -- +0.83
4. Anna Swenn Larsson (SWE) -- +1.28
5. Camille Rast (SUI) -- +1.31
6. Zrinka Ljutic (CRO) -- +1.33
7. Melanie Meillard (SUI) -- +1.43
8. Paula Moltzan (USA) -- +1.51
9. Emma Aicher (GER) -- +1.54
10. Laurence St-Germain (CAN) -- +2.25
