Mikaela Shiffrin dominant again in slalom for record-extending 103rd World Cup win

Mikaela Shiffrin made it two wins in two slalom races to start this Olympic-year Alpine skiing season, winning Sunday for her record-extending 103rd career World Cup victory.

The American star followed up last week’s win in Levi, Finland, with another in Gurgl, Austria. It’s the third straight World Cup slalom win for Shiffrin, who also won the 2024-25 season finale in Sun Valley, Idaho, in March.

After posting the top time in the first run, Shiffrin was even faster in the second to win in 1:48.11, 1.23 seconds clear of her closest challenger. The margin was even wider a week earlier, with Shiffrin winning by 1.66 seconds in Levi.

“It was pretty much exactly how I expected,” Shiffrin said. “Not easy, but I knew the others were pushing. So, there’s no choice. You have to go.”

In both Levi and Gurgl, Lara Colturi — Albania’s 19-year-old rising star — was the top challenger. She posted the second-best first run Sunday and did enough in the second to hold off Switzerland’s Camille Rast, a two-time World Cup slalom winner. Rast finished third, 1.41 seconds back.

On a challenging day with varying conditions, several top skiers struggled with missed gates, falls or time-consuming mistakes. Austria’s Katharina Liensberger, the slalom silver medalist in Beijing in 2022, went out in the first run. Croatia’s Zrinka Ljutić, last season’s crystal globe winner as the overall slalom winner, skied out in the second run.

Americans A.J. Hurt and Nina O’Brien both went out; Hurt skidded out just before the finish gate.

“It’s very special, or like, unique conditions,” Shiffrin said after the first run. “Very dry and with the cold temperatures, it’s super aggressive. So it’s hard to handle on the skis, and I for sure felt that too. … It’s less forgiving than most conditions we ski.”

The sun came out for the afternoon second run, and Shiffrin said it felt “totally different” than the first. “It was handleable,” she said.

Paula Moltzan, Shiffrin’s American teammate, called the first-run conditions “a bit chaotic.” She was sixth after the opening leg and briefly led after her second before finishing fifth.

The win extends Shiffrin’s record of 103 career Alpine skiing World Cup wins. She has held the top spot since 2023, when she passed Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark with win No. 87. Sixty-six of those victories have come in slalom.

Nearly a year ago, Shiffrin fell during a giant slalom race in Killington, Vt., and suffered an injury that kept her off the slopes for two months. When she returned in January, giant slalom remained a struggle, both mentally and physically.

Shiffrin, though, swiftly regained her slalom form. She won twice in the discipline in the final month of last season and also skied the slalom leg of a gold-medal effort with Breezy Johnson in the team combined event at February’s world championships.

She also opened this season with a fourth-place finish in a giant slalom in Soelden, Austria, her best showing in that discipline since the injury.

With the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics less than three months away, Shiffrin is the clear favorite once again in slalom. After attempting to ski every event in Beijing and leaving with no medals, she has said she intends to focus on her best events in Italy.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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