Shiffrin, 27, led Gut-Behrami by 0.13 seconds after Tuesday’s first run, then prolonged her lead on her second journey, “pushing,” she advised reporters, “as hard as I could at every turn.”
Shiffrin mentioned she was “a bit nervous for the second run” due to the standard of the competitors however “conditions on the hill were perfect.”
Now, she is going to instantly have an opportunity to extend her whole. Another large slalom is scheduled for Wednesday in Kronplatz. “I just tried to breathe a bit and enjoy it,” she mentioned, “and the thing I’m really excited about is that we get two more runs on this hill [Wednesday] because it’s in really good condition.”
Two slalom races observe this weekend within the Czech Republic. Though she has amassed her whole by successful throughout all of Alpine skiing’s disciplines, Tuesday was Shiffrin’s 18th victory in large slalom, and he or she has a record 51 wins in slalom.
The subsequent benchmark for Shiffrin? The 86 World Cup victories of Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark, who holds the record for many wins by a skier of any gender. With seven extra technical races — slaloms and large slaloms, Shiffrin’s energy — on the schedule, it’s conceivable she would threaten the record this season. She has gained eight of the 14 World Cup slaloms and large slaloms contested up to now in 2022-23.
But there’s additionally the matter, if and when she passes Stenmark, of how far she will push the brand new mark. Stenmark himself mentioned in a recent interview streamed on Olympics.com that she “will win more than 100 races.” Vonn gained her 82 races in 395 begins throughout 14 seasons, a lot of which have been shortened by a wide range of accidents. She retired in 2019 at age 34, her physique too beat as much as proceed. Stenmark’s 86 victories got here in what the International Ski Federation says have been 230 begins within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, although record-keeping wasn’t as exact in that period. Stenmark gained his final race 15 years after his first, and he retired in 1989 simply earlier than he turned 33.
Shiffrin turns 28 in March, and he or she is certainly nearer to the top of her profession than the start. But her 83rd win got here in her 238th begin, and since she made her World Cup debut simply earlier than she turned 16, she is already in her thirteenth season. She has piled up victories at a better price than both Stenmark and Vonn, and he or she would seemingly have years forward of her to construct on her whole.
After she tied Vonn this month, Shiffrin expressed uncertainty about “resetting” — her most popular time period to “breaking” — Stenmark’s record.
“I know it’s possible. Like, we have a lot of races left, and there’s not that many till I get to that number,” she told reporters. “But I know I might not win another race this season. And people will be like: ‘Oh, my gosh, you were so close. What happened?’ And I’m like, ‘That’s ski racing.’”
Vonn, nevertheless, sees it in a different way. “I knew from the very beginning that she would be the one to break all the records, but to do it at such a young age is really impressive,” Vonn wrote in a first-person essay for the Associated Press this month.
“Catching Ingemar Stenmark’s men’s mark of 86 wins was always the ultimate goal for me, but with the injuries I sustained it just wasn’t possible. For her, the sky’s the limit. I don’t think that Stenmark is necessarily the benchmark. She’s going to set the new standard, and we’ll have to wait and see how high she can go.”
