'The records keep going': Shiffrin moves to second on all-time World Cup wins list
Mikaela Shiffrin’s winning margins just get bigger and bigger in World Cup slaloms. One weekend after finishing 1.78 seconds ahead of her opponents in Finland, Shiffrin was a massive 2.29sec clear of her biggest rival, Petra Vlhova, in the United States on Sunday.
Shiffrin’s success for a fourth straight year at Killington was the 62nd World Cup win of her career tied for second on the all-time women’s list. The 24-year-old American drew level with Annemarie Moser-Proell, the Austrian downhill great of the 1970s, and now trails only Lindsey Vonn’s 82 wins.
“The records keep going, don’t they?” Shiffrin said, laughing. “We’re just doing the best we can every day. When it pays off and it shows in these kinds of records and making history like that, it is special for sure.”
Shiffrin took a 1.13sec first-run lead over Vlhova and more than doubled it the second time down a windswept
Super Star course in -6C (21F) temper- atures.
Standing calmly in the finish area to check the leaderboard, Shiffrin waved to a noisy crowd and gestured as though she had been close to the limits of staying on the course. Anna Swenn Larsson was third, trailing 2.73 behind Shiffrin. No other skier was within three seconds of Shiffrin.
Shiffrin’s record-extending 42nd win in World Cup slaloms, for men or women, followed a familiar path. Vlhova was runner-up to Shiffrin in six World Cup events last season, and Swenn Larsson took silver when Shiffrin won her fourth straight slalom title at the world championships in February.
Shiffrin’s maximum 200 points from the first two slalom races this season has created a 192-point lead already in the overall standings for the three-time defending champion. Second place is held by Michele Gisin of Switzerland, who placed ninth Sunday, 4.28sec behind Shiffrin.