Mikaela Shiffrin, with the Olympics on the bridge, puts an emphatic stamp in its season

Ketchum, Idaho – Mikaela Shiffrin was standing at the start gate before the second heat of the last world cup race on Thursday. The American alpine skiing Great had a strong advantage after the first heat, but he said, he said, the thought came to mind that perhaps he should have played us safely, to use a strategy “reaches the finish line” and not risking pushing too strong for a victory that in the end did not mean much.

“And then I heard everyone encouraged,” he said about the crowd of households waiting underneath, “and I was like, ‘okay. F – It. Let’s go.'”

After all he passed this season, it was time to let him tear.

Shiffrin jumped out of the gate and cleverly cut the increasingly thin path at the Sun Valley Resort, where the adoring crowd could be seen and listened to at the starting gate of the slalom. He published the third best time in the second round to win comfortably at the finals of the World Cup, he put an exclamation point on a season of the “Russian mountains” and delights a group of young fans who were dressed as Dalmatians to put a Disney theme on the hope of seeing Shiffrin to claim his 101st victory of the World Cup.

Shiffrin ended in 1: 45.92, 1.13 seconds of distance from the nearest competitor, Germany’s duerr Lena. Slovakia Andreja Slokar took the third, only 0.01 behind Duerr.

Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates her victory on Thursday in the female slalom at the finals of the World Cup in Ketchum, Idaho. It was the 101st victory of the World Cup of his career. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

Shiffrin concluded the 2024-25 season in which he started-in-top of a podium of slalom of the World-but Cup The months in the middle were full of physical and mental recovery after an injury of late November to have left her with a sting wound in the abdomen and cost them two months of competition and, in the end, a blow to the title of the season.

While he was out, Shiffrin lost four races and Croatia Zrinka Ljutić launched himself while the goat was away. Ljutić has won two races that Shiffrin lost and also the race in Courchevel, France, in January, when Shiffrin returned and closed in tenth place while returning to return to the form.

The result: although Shiffrin won more slalom (four) races than any other woman this season, the lost points of the races that she missed were too much to overcome in the race for the title of the season. Ljutić won the Slalom Crystal Globe, the trophy given to the individual winners of the discipline and to the general champion, and sent Shiffrin, who arrived fourth in the slalom ranking, in a low season without any translucent hardware for the fourth time in the last 13 seasons.

An euphoric ljutić, who turned 21 in January, had a plan to celebrate.

“Maybe I will get drunk for the first time in my life,” he said.

A well -deserved applause, but there is no doubt that Shiffrin is still the Slalom star. He has won eight of his last 10 games in the discipline and now he has 64 slalom wins of the career world cup. Only two more, Lindsey Vonn and Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden, have more wins in the World Cup total. There will still be a handful of events in the World Cup next season before the 2026 Olympics begin in Cortina d’Ampezzo, in Italy, but at the end of the 2024-25 campaign, Shiffrin, despite everything, is the clear favorite in its best discipline.

Wins, sting wounds, Dalmatians. How do you evaluate the entire season?

“We could be here for days,” he joked. “This was a Russian mountain.”

At the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, Shiffrin competed in all six events available: downhill, super-g, giant slalom, slalom, combined and mixed. He left China with three DNF and without medals.

Over time since then, it has been removed from speed events, downhill and super-g. He ran for the last time one of those in January 2024, when he was injured in a downhill accident in Cortina. Last October, he recognized that his team had told her It is “physically impossible” to prepare it For all different disciplines.

The giant slalomes have not even been easily easy. It was that event in Killington, vt., Where Shifrin fell and suffered the injury that interrupted his season. The side effects of the accident have left her Fighting to reacing the fastest disciplineMentally and physically, and did not have the necessary points to qualify to run in the event in the finals of the World Cup.

He would like to reverse his Olympic fortunes next year. And the result of Thursday slalom gave her a springboard in a critical training period.

“The end of the season with this level in the slalom gives me a lot of energy in the preparation time and in our next training camps to try to combine this level of slalom with where I want to go (giant slalom),” he said. “It gives me energy to do the job. It seems to me that there is a lot of work to do, but this gives me the inspiration to do it.”

That day in Killington should have been his coronation as the first alpine skier with 100 world cup wins. The accident changed all this, delaying the celebration for three months.

Mikaela Shiffrin signing autographs on Thursday after her victory in the last slalom race of the World Cup at the Sun Valley Resort in Ketchum, Idaho. (Zack Pierce / Atletico)

When Finally marked n. 100he seemed raised. Thursday, it seemed ready for the next chapter.

“Cento (wins of the World Cup) was this moment of restoring,” he said, “and 101 is like a restart almost. There is still a lot of future in my career, it is hoped … it’s not the end, it’s not the beginning, but it is somewhere in the beautiful middle.”

When his medal ceremony was over, Shiffrin moved away from the race course. A line of 50 or 60 fans waited along the fence to have the possibility of saying congratulations or obtaining an autograph. Shiffrin stopped for all of them, including girls in Dalmatian clothes before walking in Offseason.

The Olympics are less than a year later. Shiffrin seems and plays ready for the challenge.

“You have a taste of why we train so hard,” he said. “This makes it a little easier to immerse yourself in the following months with a good attitude.”

(Top photo of Mikaela Shiffrin on the podium after his victory Thursday: Christophe Pallot / Agence Zoom / Getty Images)