Mikaela Shiffrin Breaks Lindsey Vonn’s Record To Become Winningest Woman Alpine Skier

The record watch is finally over. She’s done it.

Winning her 83rd World Cup race Tuesday, Mikaela Shiffrin has entered rarefied air as the winningest woman alpine skier of all time, edging past her tie with Lindsey Vonn.

Shiffrin took the win in a giant slalom race in Italy’s Kronplatz, finishing just 0.45 seconds ahead of Lara Gut-Behrami of Switzerland. She had tied Lindsey Vonn’s World Cup record of 82 on January 8 in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia.

“It might take me a little bit to figure out what to say,” Shiffrin said after her landmark achievement, per the Associated Press. “I don’t know what to say right now.”

It’s a triumphant statement for the 27-year-old after the world watched her uncharacteristically struggle at last year’s Beijing Olympics.

Shiffrin took gold in giant slalom and silver in alpine combined at Pyeongchang 2018 and finished just off the podium in slalom.

In Beijing, Shiffrin competed in all five individual races (giant slalom, slalom, super-G, downhill and alpine combined) for the first time, as well as the the mixed team parallel.

She did not finish on the podium in any of them, leading to some serious self-introspection.

“Why do I keep coming back?” she tweeted in February 2022.

But a month after the Olympics, Shiffrin won her fourth World Cup overall title. And she even allowed herself to look ahead to the possiblity of breaking Vonn’s record.

“That record is not going to be the thing that defines my success in my career,” Shiffrin told me in April 2022. “It’s already been successful—but I’m still here and still doing it. As I keep skiing in the next season or so I’m almost on a journey to find out what the goal needs to be and what my career is going to look like moving forward.”

Needless to say, Shiffrin deserves to take a moment and process the magnitude of what she has just accomplished. There’s no need for the world to place outside expectations on her.

Still, with the women’s alpine all-time record, the watch now turns to the overall World Cup record of 86, held by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark. Shiffrin is just three wins away from being crowned the best alpine skier of all time.

And, at 27, she’s ahead of the game. Vonn was 33 years old when she won her last World Cup event. Stenmark was 32.

Her chances to do so will be immediate; there is another giant slalom race Wednesday in Kronplatz and two slalom races on the docket for this weekend in the Czech Republic.

“Mikaela Shiffrin is now not only the best woman alpine skier of all time, but she is also a great person, teammate and role model for the sport of alpine skiing,” said Sophie Goldschmidt, CEO of U.S. Ski & Snowboard. “As an organization, we are so proud of her accomplishments and cannot wait to see how she further transforms the sport and the history books next.”