Paris (AFP) – Mikaela Shiffrin said Wednesday that she would not race any World Cup downhills this season as she aims to become the first racer to win 100 victories on the circuit. Shiffrin started her career with a strong technical base, specializing with no little success in the slalom and giant slalom events. As she has matured, Shiffrin extended her repertoire and began racing alpine skiing’s two speed events, the super-G and downhill.
Of the 97 World Cup victories she has notched up in 14 seasons, 60 have come in slalom and 22 in the giant slalom. But she has also managed to bag five wins in the super-G and four in downhill, the most recent coming in St. Moritz in December 2023. Juggling four events she insists she will not be doing, at least for this season. That, Shiffrin said, was “always a struggle” while the slalom and giant slalom remained her priority. Over-stretching was “potentially setting me up for a little bit of failure…and at some point, we end up sacrificing quality.”
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“So this prep block, I’ve been focusing and just cut out downhill entirely, focus on the super-G training and try to get that combination of the downhill speed skills and the technical giant slalom skills, and put that back together and we’ll see where that takes us this season.” Shiffrin added: “It’s also not to say that downhill is entirely out of my future. It’s just kind of a shift for this season about where I want to focus and see how that goes. So I’m still kind of keeping my mentality in the pot, if you will.”
– No pressure over the century –
Shiffrin ended last season on 97 World Cup victories, but insisted she felt no pressure on becoming the first skier to reach the landmark of 100 wins. “I don’t want to talk about the records. I don’t think about the records,” she said, adding that previous landmarks were more memorable for which friends and family members were present. But she did admit to feeling “energised” by people bringing up the possibility of a century of victories.
“It’s incredible that people are still following along this journey and are excited about it. That’s an incredible positive. I feel almost less pressure about it because they just think it’s exciting. So let’s go for it and I’m going to do my best because I want to be here and in shape to hopefully win races or at least fight for victories. That’s my goal anyway, so try to have fun with it.”
Shiffrin said she had no excuses after a solid block of training in Chile, Argentina, and Europe. “There’s just like such a stark contrast to last year, where we fought and struggled with the weather all through the entire summer and the fall,” she said. “And then this year I’ve had a pretty significant amount of really solid training in slalom, GS, and Super G and that’s been great. I’m feeling just physically in a pretty good place and mentally as well.”
Shiffrin’s fiancé and fellow ski racer Aleksander Aamodt Kilde will be present as she kicks off the season in a giant slalom in the Austrian resort of Soelden on Saturday. But the Norwegian was on Wednesday ruled out of competition this season, having failed to recover fully from complications over a shoulder operation following a crash in Wengen last January.
© 2024 AFP
