Stenmark stoked about Shiffrin’s record: ‘She deserves it more than anyone else’

Mikaela Shiffrin chose the home of Swedish skiing to land her 87th and record-setting World Cup win. But the man whose mark she took and who once dominated his home slopes of Are, could not be happier.

“She deserves the record more than anyone else,” Ingemar Stenmark told the FIS.

“It’s just fun. She is a great skier and seems to be a very sympathetic person. So, I just think it’s nice for her.”

The two-time Olympic gold medallist and five-time world champion caused Alpine fever in the Scandinavian country in the 70s and 80s. He reached the top of a World Cup podium for the first time in 1974, took three consecutive overall World Cup titles between 1976 and 1978, and claimed his 86th World Cup victory in February 1989, a couple of weeks before retiring.

Stenmark’s record stood for 34 years. It could have fallen sooner: the USA’s Lindsey Vonn claimed her 82nd World Cup win in March 2018 before injuries forced her retirement at the age of 34.

Having seen Shiffrin in action, however, Stenmark knew his record did not have many years left.

“Already back then I said that Shiffrin will definitely get 100 wins. And I still think she will do that if she continues,” he said.

“She is a complete skier. She has a good technique, but it’s not only that. She has physical strength, she has a strong head – those things combined make her so good.

“And she’s smart too. She doesn’t have to race at 100%’s speed. She knows that the others have to go beyond their ability (to beat her) and that they will make some mistakes.”

Shiffrin has often hailed Stenmark as an inspiration and someone who set the standards for today’s racers. The Alpine icon is humbled by her words.

“She seems to know who I am anyway,” he said.

“It’s a bit incomprehensible to me. It’s been so long since I quit.”

The Swedish technical specialist is hesitant to compare similarities between himself and the new record holder, but agrees it takes a different level of drive to get to 86 World Cup wins and beyond.

“To reach the top and be able to keep winning so many competitions, you have to try to find a new motivation, new goals. And that’s what’s hard when you’ve been around for a while and when you’ve won a lot,” Stenmark said.

“She is starting to get – and is already – good at super-G. And she can do downhill races well too, so perhaps that’s a new motivation for her.”

Shiffrin’s 87 World Cup victories are spread across slalom, giant slalom, downhill, super-G, combined, parallel, and city events. Stenmark’s 86 wins came in 46 giant slaloms and 40 slaloms.

He does not remember when in the early 1980s he passed Austria’s 62-time World Cup winner Annemarie Moser-Proell to take the record. But he does feel for Shiffrin who now has to find new goals to reach, new records to break – even though he is sure she will do that.

“It is difficult,” Stenmark said.

“When I broke that record, it was a long time before I quit. It was nice when you broke the record. But after that, I never thought about it. And I don’t think she’ll care too much after beating it either. She just has to find some other motivations.”

Stenmark has stayed active beyond his professional skiing career. In 1996 and 2011 he won Swedish TV shows in which former athletes competed against each other, and in 2015 he took the title in Sweden’s version of celebrity TV dance show ‘Dancing with the Stars’.

And the passion for speed is still there. Over the past two years, the father-of-two has swapped ski slopes for car race courses, competing in the Porsche Sprint Challenge Scandinavia.

Stenmark said his motivation “ran out a bit” after his gold medals in slalom and giant slalom at the Lake Placid 1980 Olympic Winter Games. Yet he stayed in the sport for almost another decade as he kept smashing records.

“I can’t say I was aiming to break records, I just tried to win race after race,” he said.

“The world championships and the Olympics were perhaps the motivation for me. In the last few years, the motivation was to be with my friends in the Swedish national team. It was a nice group of people.”

Stenmark believes Shiffrin has the potential and drive to keep collecting World Cup wins in the years ahead, especially since her partner, Norwegian Alpine ace Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, 30, is also on the tour.

“After all, she has a boyfriend – Kilde – who is also doing it, so that makes it easier," Stenmark said.

"They can train together in the summer and motivate each other."