Two-time Olympic champion and reigning World Cup slalom globe holder Mikaela Shiffrin heads into the 2025-26 FIS Alpine Ski World Cup season opener this weekend in Levi with quiet confidence and a familiar spring in her step.
The 30-year-old American, who has claimed a record 60 World Cup slalom victories, completed her final training block in Copper Mountain, Colorado, last week before traveling to the Arctic Circle. Shiffrin posted a series of social-media clips showing crisp, aggressive turns on injected early-season snow—signals that her technical precision remains untouched despite a condensed off-season.
“Levi is always special,” Shiffrin said during Thursday’s pre-race press conference. “The cold, the reindeer, the steep pitch—it’s the perfect place to flip the switch from training to racing.”
Shiffrin’s 97th career World Cup win came in the final slalom of last season in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Austria, where she edged Switzerland’s Wendy Holdener by 0.28 seconds. That victory extended her record for most crystal globes in a single discipline to 11 and kept her atop the all-time wins list, seven clear of Ingemar Stenmark.
This year’s Levi weekend features back-to-back slaloms on Saturday and Sunday, a format that historically favors Shiffrin: she has won 10 of the 16 slalom races staged on the Levi Black course since 2013, including a sweep of both days in 2023.
Yet the field is deeper than ever. Slovakia’s Petra Vlhová, the 2021 Levi double winner and Shiffrin’s closest rival in recent seasons, returns fully fit after knee surgery sidelined her for much of 2024-25. Switzerland’s Holdener, Germany’s Lena Dürr, and a resurgent Croatian contingent led by 20-year-old Zrinka Ljutić round out a podium-threat list that could produce the tightest slalom margins in years.
Shiffrin downplayed any notion of pressure. “I’m not chasing numbers anymore,” she said. “I just want to ski fast and clean. If I do that, the results take care of themselves.”
Saturday’s first run begins at 10:15 a.m. local time (CET), with the second run at 1:15 p.m. Sunday follows the same schedule. Live coverage will air on Peacock in the United States and on Eurosport across Europe.
For Shiffrin, Levi is more than a season opener—it’s the starting gun for what could be another record-breaking campaign.
