‘It would be an enormous accomplishment’ – Mikaela Shiffrin chases down Lindsey Vonn’s and Ingemar Stenmark’s records

Mikaela Shiffrin will be going into the upcoming World Cup season looking to chase down Lindsey Vonn’s and Ingemar Stenmark’s career win records.

The season begins on Saturday with Shiffrin hoping to add to her 74 career wins in Austria and take a step closer to match the hauls of Vonn (82) and Stenmark (86).

Vonn holds the record for the most career victories for a woman, while Stenmark’s total is highest among all alpine skiers.

Shiffrin has never claimed fewer than three victories in any of her previous 10 seasons, and even managed 17 wins during a stunning 2018/19 campaign.

Every victory in this coming season will draw further attention to those two records, in what has already been a glittering career for the Colorado native.

The 27-year-old has four overall World Cup titles, two Olympic Gold medals and six world championships to her name, and admits that while it would be an incredible achievement to match those records, it is not the be all or end all.

“I mean, it would be an enormous accomplishment in my career, and maybe one of the most meaningful accomplishments, because it would have meant that I was consistently at the top and successful throughout my entire career, throughout multiple kind of generations of athletes, despite injuries, despite some very traumatic experiences.”

“I do not feel like I have to achieve that record in order to feel comfortable retiring. I feel like retirement is fully based off of just how I feel when I’m skiing and if I feel like I have the energy – the physical and mental energy – to keep pushing and to really continue to push the sport, which is the basis of what I want to try to do, is to always push the sport.

“I feel like I’ve been able to do that for most of my career, or all of my career, and if it gets to the point where I’m not able to continue to push, then it’s kind of pointless to keep doing it, at least at this capacity,” Shiffrin continued. “So that would be my gauge for when can I retire or be done with skiing, done with ski racing, and feel kind of comfortable with what I’ve accomplished. To be honest, it could be tomorrow, and I’m already comfortable with what I’ve accomplished.”

Shiffrin heads into the new season looking to consign a frustrating performance at this year’s Beijing Olympics to the past.

The 27-year-old was subjected to abuse on social media and was mocked for sitting on the snow following her DNF in the slalom.

“I just wanted to disappear, and I was like I’m going to have to ski down this hill into the finish and face humans that are judging – no matter what it’s a judgement – and I was so not prepared to do that, and I just need to take a minute because this feels so awful,” she told NBC News.

“A lot of people see that as I wanted more attention from the cameras, I just was being a poor sport. To be honest, I can understand how they would see it from the TV point of view, and I really apologise for that.

“But otherwise, you take what comes and you try to do the best you can and you try to do the right thing and you try to be nice, and hopefully people will return that with kindness. But most of the time there’s going to be people who are going to want to shoot you down and be a little bit mean. It’s just life.”