Even assured of title,Shiffrin has records to chase

PARIS: Without a ski touching the snow on Saturday, Mikaela Shiffrin joined some elite company by clinching her third straight World Cup overall title.

Leading the standings by 719 points, Shiffrin had elected to miss the racing in Russia this weekend where the focus was on speed events. When heavy overnight snow forced the cancellation of Saturday’s super-G that meant only seven races, and a maximum of 700 points, remain in the season.

In practice, the cancelation only confirmed the inevitable. Petra Vlhova, the one rival who could have caught Shiffrin had also opted not to go to Sochi.

Shiffrin was at home in bed when the race was cancelled.

“I have secured the overall globe, which is a strange thing because I’m sitting here on my bed.” she said in a video posted on her Twitter account. “I feel like right here, right now I didn’t do something that: ‘oh here you go, you woke up today and here’s an overall globe.’”

“On the other hand this entire season has been spectacular,” added Shiffrin. “An overall globe has been one of the biggest dreams of mine since I was a little girl.”

Shiffrin joined some legendary names on Saturday with her third big globe. She tied Austrian Petra Kronberger (1990-92) and American compatriot Lindsey Vonn (2008-10), who both won three straight title and trails only the Austrian Annemarie Moser-Proell who won five in a row (1971-75).

“Third overall in a row. Third overall period,” a grinning Shiffrin said. “I’m not showing it a whole bunch. I could go jump around and do a little happy dance. It’s pretty crazy.”

Shiffrin crushed the competition all season. In 21 starts, she won 14 times, finished lower down the podium three more times and in at least the top 10 every time she raced.

In 2017 and 2018, Shiffrin built her overall titles on the her strongest event, the slalom, an event in which she has won the World Cup in six of the last seven seasons.

This season she is in position to win the small globes for the giant slalom and the Super-G for the first time and leads in both disciplines going into the last two weeks of the season. Shiffrin had never won a World Cup super-G before this season. Now she has won three.

“This season it’s even something more special because a fair proportion of my wins have come in super-G,” Shiffrin said. “I’ve always felt like I wanted to earn it all events. I felt like this season was a really big step.”

There are still other historic steps Shiffrin can take before the end of the season.

With six races left, she has already equalled Vreni Schneider’s record of 14 World Cup victories in a season the Swiss skier set in 1988-9, when she started 20 races.