Much has recently been written about Mikaela Shiffrin vis-à-vis Lindsey Vonn and or Ingemar Stenmark. Some are assiduously calculating win rates and comparing her to tennis players, a bear of the aureate variety and even a certain big cat. That's all well and good, but we've come to this moment in history through blood, sweat and tears - one race at a time. Many of those races happened quite a while ago now, so I thought I'd refresh my memory and maybe even yours too.
Below I've created an annotated history of key moment's in Shiffrin's career. I invite you to take a walk down memory lane with me.
TIMELINE
March 11, 2011 - World Cup Debut
Shiffrin's made her World Cup debut two days before her 16th birthday, in a giant slalom race in Špindlerův Mlýn. That day she started bib 46, and was a DNQ finishing 4.64 behind first run leader Viktoria Rebensberg. Lindsey Vonn finished on the podium in the race, taking third place.
March 12, 2011 - World Cup SL debut
I can't find video. Shiffrin missed the flip by +0.05 of a second. Shiffrin's childhood hero Marlies Schild took the victory to seal the SL globe.
November 27, 2011 - First time in the points and first top 10
Shiffrin skiing with bib 37 finishes 8th in the SL at Aspen in only her forth WC start as Schild wins again. Listen to her talk about handling the nerves. Sound familiar? https://youtu.be/8itaw_tuI68
December 29, 2011 - First World Cup podium
This time starting bib 40 in Lienz, Austria, Shiffrin is 12th fastest after run 1. She then wins the 2nd run to land on the podium for the first time! Schild again takes the victory. And we get perhaps our first ME-KAI-AY-LA from the Austrian PA announcer. She becomes the youngest skier to podium in SL since American Tamara McKinney in 1978. https://youtu.be/-a89Xg-uljg
March 2012 - First World Cup Finals
Shiffrin finishes the 2011-2012 season with four top 10s and makes World Cup Finals in Schladming, Austria where she finishes 15th. Shiffrin gains crucial experience on the track that will hold World Championships the following year. She turns 17 at Finals. Marlies Schild again wins the SL globe.
December 20, 2012 - First World Cup Win
After the solid performance in 11-12, Shiffrin has improved her start number. In Åre, Sweden she goes out bib 10 and finishes second in run 1 to Frida Hansdotter. Shiffrin then wins run 2 to grab her first World Cup victory! Shiffrin finds time at the bottom of the course - something that would become her signature, especially in SL.
On the US broadcast:
Doug Lewis: You know what she does well?
Steve Porino: Everything
Ha...prescient Pino.
The look from Shiffrin at 2:50 on the video below when she realizes she's won but is still in disbelief is priceless. https://youtu.be/YVXLHIvqmNk
This race also represented something of a changing of the guard in women's SL. Shiffrin would of course go on to be Shiffrin. But this race also announced the arrival of Hansdotter. Although already 27, this was only her third WC podium. She would go on to hit her stride and raced very well until her retirement in 2019. Hansdotter finished 2nd or 3rd thirty times in her career, against two victories, many times she was bested by Shiffrin. But she famously got revenge, skiing to Olympic gold in the SL at PyeongChang in 2018.
February 16, 2013 - SL Gold at World Championships
Shiffrin is in third after the first run, trailing Hansdotter. She handles the pressure and skis well in run 2 to take the gold. The shots of her parents embracing in celebration after her victory are now extremely poignant. She becomes the second youngest woman to win World Championship slalom gold behind only Hanni Wenzel (1974). https://youtu.be/Ck1cJrz93_0
March 2013 - First Slalom Globe
The race for the slalom globe comes down to World Cup Finals in Lenzerheide. Tina Maze leads after the first run, with Shiffrin in 4th, 1.17 seconds back. Shiffrin finds a huge amount of time on the bottom of the course and wins the 2nd run by 0.71 seconds! This means of course she's won the race and her first SL discipline globe. Listen to Lewis & Porino on the call. Shiffrin increases her margin so much at the bottom of the second run that at first they think there's an error with the timing. https://youtu.be/LI7NegWhwqE
Shiffrin finishes 12-13 with four victories and takes her first slalom globe by 33 points over Maze. Maze finished the season with 2,414 points in the overall! The highest total ever for either gender.
December 1, 2013 - First GS Podium
Shiffrin's GS results had been coming along. She'd been 6th in the GS at World Championships and had begun the season in Soelden with another 6th place finish. But Shiffrin's first GS podium came on home snow in Beaver Creek. With the 2nd place finish Shiffrin showed she was more than just a SL specialist. https://youtu.be/eV511WCTToE
A popular debate at the time was whether Shiffrin could evolve into more than a slalom specialist. Something she's still sensitive to now. She gave a quote after her 82 win in Kranjska Gora to saying in effect, she thought 82 might be a SL victory and expected her critics to discount the achievement to a certain degree (I unfortunately can't find video of the quote at the moment).
February 14th, 2014 - Olympic Gold
Shiffrin becomes the youngest ever Olympic slalom champion at the age of 18 years, 11 months. She grabbed a half second lead after run 1. Marlies Schild produced a storming run and turned in the fastest run two time. Despite a significant mistake that almost saw Shiffrin go out of the course, Shiffrin was able to hold off her idol and won by 0.53 seconds to take the gold.
In the span of a year Shiffrin and won both World Championship and Olympic gold and had won four times on the World Cup and the results were beginning to build in GS as well (Shiffrin was 5th in the Olympic GS). The writing was increasingly on the wall for other tech skiers. Schild and Maria Hoefl-Riesch (4th in the Olympic SL) retired at the end of the 13-14 season.
The table below shows Shiffrin's career results through the end of the 2013-2014 season (EOS stands for end of season). Shiffrin made her debut on the World Cup in March of 2011. Three short years later she was World and Olympic slalom champion and two time SL discipline champion.
Check Back for Part 2.
Comentários