Mikaela Shiffrin Hammers 102nd World Cup Win

Mikaela Shiffrin wasted zero time setting the tone for an Olympic winter. In true Shiffrin style, she kicked off the 2025 slalom season in Levi, Finland, by clearing the field by 1.66 seconds. Her 102nd win extends her record for most decorated slalom racer. If you’ve followed our past coverage of Shiffrin’s mileage, precision, and sheer relentlessness, this one fits right into the arc we’ve seen for years.

Shiffrin laid down two race runs. The second was more than a full second faster, beating out second place Lara Colturi. Levi has always been friendly to Shiffrin (nine wins over the years), but this one carried that unmistakable “Olympic-year lock-in” energy.

Colturi, the young Albanian phenom raised in Italy and turning 19 the same day, matched her career best in second. Emma Aicher, a German all-rounder who’s been steadily climbing, earned her first tech podium in third, 2.59 seconds back.

Shiffrin’s own assessment of the day was classic honesty and edge: the first run was “kind of perfect,” and the only real fear going into run two was not blowing a massive lead. “If you are pushing as hard as you can, you can't mess it up," she told reporters.

This year’s Shiffrin campaign also comes with a tighter race schedule. After a scary GS crash last season, she’s pared things back to slalom, GS, and maybe super-G—aiming at Milan-Cortina with maximum focus and minimal noise. We covered that shift last spring when she first talked about recalibrating her volume, and today’s result shows it’s working.

The women now head to Austria for another slalom next weekend. It'll be another early-season check on who’s building toward an Olympic February in peak form.

As always, Shiffrin’s vibe: deliberate and ruthless, is a different universe from the stuff we usually cover in the freeride world. But it’s undeniably inspiring. The precision, the longevity, the mental steel…there’s a reason even the gnarliest big-mountain skiers keep an eye on Shiffrin's happenings.

The Olympic winter weason is officially on. Shiffrin is looking like a top contender yet again.