Shiffrin Featured in Sports Illustrated

Two-time Olympic gold medalist, three-time reigning FIS Ski World Cup overall champion, five-time World Champion, historical four-time slalom World Champ, super-G World Champ, only athlete to win in all six disciplines, winningest slalom skier of all-time...the list of accolades goes on, and on - and then on some more - for Mikaela Shiffrin. Recently, Sports Illustrated covered Mikaela's historic 2019 season - in which she won a record 17 World Cup victories, surpassing and thus smashing Vreni Schneider's previous record of 14 - and what she has learned from it. 

Sports Illustrated senior sports feature writer, Greg Bishop, joined Shiffrin this fall in Copper Mountain as she went through a series of studio interviews for the Land Rover U.S. Alpine Ski Team's annual media days. Following her from room to room, Greg heard media speak over and over of Mikaela's dominance, and then joined her as she drove home to Edwards to further discuss how she feels about being one of the most dominant athletes of her time. With a laugh, she tells Greg that when she was a child she wanted to be "a flying rainbow horse." 

Greg also interviews former teammate - and a childhood idol of Mikaela's - Bode Miller, to give context to Mikaela's greatness and how it stacks up to more well-known sports. Bode's words will give you the shivers, just as they did for Mikaela. Understated as ever, she still can't believe an idol would speak of her so highly. 

She tries to deflect the immensity of her accomplishments, even while experts, like the most prolific American male skier, Bode Miller, made the case that what she accomplished last season is without precedent in all of sports. Better than Novak Djokovic's 2015 season, when he won three Grand Slam tournaments, or even the so-called Tiger Slam of '00–01. "Those are sports where you can make errors in matches and just recover," he says. "In our sport, the margins are so fine, the tolerance for errors is so small, it's just that much more difficult to win as many races as she did."

You're going to want to read the entire piece, and grab a copy in print when it hits the stands. 

Read the full article by Greg Bishop in Sports Illustrated.