mikaela shiffrin Finished a season defined by records with two more.
On the final day of the campaign, Shiffrin won the World Cup Final’s Giant Slalom, breaking her tie for the most women’s career slalom wins and the most career podiums across all Women’s World Cup races.
Shiffrin won the 600th over to register his 88th World Cup win Thea Louise Stjernsund Combining times from Norway’s two runs on Sunday in Andorra.
Alpine Skiing World Cup: full result
She won the 21st giant slalom race of her career, breaking a tie for the most ever in the Women’s World Cup. vreni schneiderA Swiss star of the 1980s and 90s.
She scored her 138th career World Cup podium across all events, breaking her tie for the most ever in the Women’s World Cup. lindsey vonn, Shiffrin earned her 138th podium in her 249th start, meaning she finished in the top three in 55 percent of World Cup races prior to her 2011 debut at age 15.
Earlier this season, Shiffrin joined Vaughn and Ingmar Stenmark, a Swede of the 1970s and 80s, for the most career Alpine Skiing World Cup wins. He won 14 times from November to March, his second best season after a record 17-win campaign in 2018–19.
In those intervening years, Shiffrin endured the toughest times of his life, supplanted as the world’s top slalom skier and his skiing questioned as never before.
On Saturday afternoon, Shiffrin was asked what made the difference between this winter and the fall. There were many factors. He gave an important detail.
“I had a lot of problems with my memory,” he told a press conference. “Not this season, so much, but last season and the season before. I couldn’t remember the courses. And when I was going through it, I couldn’t have the mental energy for another run.
Pre-race course observation and the ability to retain that knowledge for more than a minute after an hour are integral to success in ski racing. Shiffrin is so meticulous and methodical in her training, historically prioritizing it over racing in her junior days, that oversight would fit her full Worlds preparation.
It wasn’t until she started working with a new sports psychologist last summer that she realized how she had lost that ability.
“It was like less of a focus on sports psychology and more of a focus on sports psychology and a little bit more of a grief counseling style,” she said. “Explaining what was really going on in my brain, like chemical changes in the brain caused by trauma. Not just grief, but what actually happened to my dad, seeing him in the hospital, touching him after he died.” Painful experience to know. Those are the things you can’t get out of your head. It had an effect. Frankly, it still does.
Shiffrin had an “awkward a-ha moment” after inspecting his first course this season in November in Finland.
“It didn’t take me that long to observe, and I remembered the entire course,” she said. “Oh my God, I was like coming out of a cloud in which I had been for more than two years.”
What followed was a win, of course, and a season that came close to Shifrin’s unmatched 2018–19. Fourteen wins in 31 World Cup starts, her busiest season ever, and overall, winning season titles in slalom and GS Runway.
“After last season, I didn’t feel like I could get to a level with my skiing again where it was really competing for slalom globes,” she said. “And GS, I actually expected a little bit more, but then at the start of the season, I counted myself out.
“I feel that my highest level of skiing has been higher than in the last few seasons, probably higher than my entire career. My average level of skiing has also been higher than in previous seasons, and my lowest level of skiing even higher Used to be.”
There are other reasons for the revival of supremacy, though Shiffrin was also the best skier in the world last season (Olympics aside). She went out of her way Saturday afternoon to give credit to her head coach of seven years, mike daywho left the team during the World Championships when he was told that he would not be kept for the next season.
“He’s as much a part of the success of this entire season as he always has been,” said Shiffrin, who took the part to bring Day along carin harjoThe first woman to become their head coach as a pro.
Shiffrin’s biggest success this season began when he scored a Chairlift interview in mid-December among retired Liechtenstein skiers Tina Weerather and Italian Sophia Gogia, the world’s top downhiller. Gogia spoke of his disdain for mediocrity.
“From then until now, every time I put on my skis, I’m like, ‘Okay, don’t be mediocre today,'” Shiffrin said in January.
During his sophomore season, Shiffrin felt like he did in 2018-19.
“It’s mind boggling for me to be in a position again where I felt that kind of momentum through a season because after [2018-19] season, I was like, this is never going to happen again, and my best days of my career are really behind me, which was kind of sad to realize at this point four years ago,” Shiffrin said. , who turned 28 years old last week. “This season, if anything, proved that, win 17 [from 2018-19] It’s still possible to feel that kind of momentum on a side or a record or all of those things.”
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Mikaela Shiffrin wraps up World Cup with another win, two more records and a revelation originally appeared NBCSports.com