SCHLADMING, AUSTRIA - Mikaela Shiffrin won the last World Cup women’s slalom before the Beijing Olympics on Tuesday to take her 47th victory in the discipline and smash a record the US skier had shared with Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark.
The double Olympic gold medalist, who shed tears at the finish, has now won more races in a single discipline than any other skier, male or female, in World Cup history.
Stenmark won 46 men’s giant slaloms in a career stretching from 1973 to 1989.
Tuesday’s race was originally scheduled for Flachau but rearranged, to a long and steep piste usually reserved for men’s races, due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in that resort.
The American now has 73 World Cup wins in total, 13 short of Stenmark’s all-time record.
Shiffrin, 26, had been only fifth after the opening leg in Schladming, Austria, but dominated the second run down the floodlit piste.
Slovakian Petra Vlhova, who had won five of the previous six slaloms and led after the first leg, had to settle for second with the consolation of securing the crystal globe for the discipline.