On Saturday, Mikaela Shiffrin won her 87th World Cup race, breaking the record set by skiing legend Ingemar Stenmark.
In re, Sweden, the American won the slalom to become the sport’s all-time winningest athlete.
“Pretty difficult to comprehend,” Shiffrin said after the race. “Here are my brother and sister-in-law. I had no idea they were coming, so it’s even more special.”
Despite the stakes, Shiffrin was in dominant form. She won by 0.92 seconds over Wendy Holdener of Switzerland, with Anna Swenn Larsson of Sweden finishing third.
The victory comes on the same resort where she won her first World Cup race in December 2012.
After breaking the record that had stood since 1989, the two-time Olympic gold medalist was overcome with emotion.
“The best feeling is having a lead on the second run and having to be smart,” she added.
“I just wanted to be fast too and ski the second run like its own race. That’s amazing because I did it exactly how I wanted.
“To the entire team and everyone who has helped me this entire season and career, all these people reaching out now after all these years, it’s pretty incredible. I just wanted to say thank you.” Breaking Stenmark’s record caps off a remarkable season for Shiffrin, who did not win a single medal and failed to finish in three of the five races at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
She has now won 13 World Cups this season, four fewer than her own record of 17 set in 2018-19.
With her 86th World Cup victory on Friday, the 27-year-old equaled Stenmark’s record and expressed gratitude for the honor.
“It is the greatest honor of my career to be mentioned in the same sentence as Ingemar Stenmark. “Incomprehensible and truly unforgettable,” she wrote on Twitter on Friday.