Mikaela Shiffrin clinched her fifth overall World Cup title on Saturday but is still waiting for her record 86th career win.
Shiffrin finished tied for fifth on Saturday in Kvitfjell, Norway, giving her enough points to seal the overall title.
“It’s pretty wild actually. You know the overall, or any season titles, it’s always weird to explain how it feels the day you win it if you didn’t win the race,” Shriffin, 27, said.
She has also locked up the slalom title and leads the giant slalom standings with 118 points with two races to go.
Shiffrin won the overall title in three straight years — 2017-19 — and also in 2022. Her five championships tied her for second all-time among women behind Annemarie Moser-Proell of Austria. Another Austrian, Marcel Hirscher, is the overall record holder with eight straight titles from 2012-19.
With his next victory in the World Cup competition, Shiffrin will have 86, which would tie Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark for the all-time record. She broke fellow American Lindsey Vonn’s women’s record of 82 in January.
Shiffrin will compete in the Super G on Sunday. She ranks eighth in that discipline this season.
Shiffrin said she had her eyes on the overall title from the start.
“It’s really amazing. That (overall title) was like the big, big goal for me this season,” Shiffrin said. “I was so focused on it that I even talked about it in interviews at the beginning of the season. Normally I don’t talk about it that much because it takes a long time to figure out if you can do it.”
Saturday’s downhill was won by Kajsa Vickhoff Lie, who became the first Norwegian woman to win a World Cup downhill in its 56-year history.
–Field Level Media
Source: sn.dk