Seventeen-year-old Mikaela Shiffrin of Eagle-Vail reacts after crossing the finish line to win the World Cup women&#8217;s slalom in Are, Sweden, on
Seventeen-year-old Mikaela Shiffrin of Eagle-Vail reacts after crossing the finish line to win the World Cup women's slalom in Are, Sweden, on Thursday. (Jonathan Nackstrand, Getty Images)

Mikaela Shiffrin had a strange feeling Thursday that she was ready to claim her first World Cup victory. That might seem a precocious notion for a 17-year-old only a few weeks into her second World Cup season, but then she proved it. The Eagle-Vail resident prevailed in a slalom in Are, Sweden, becoming the third-youngest American to win a World Cup ski race.

"I got this feeling like, 'Finally, I'm ready,' " Shiffrin said in a teleconference Thursday afternoon. "I kept telling everybody, 'I won't win until I'm ready, and I can't tell you when that's going to be, but I hope it's soon.' And all of a sudden I just felt ready."

Shiffrin had already managed two podium appearances since being named to the World Cup team last year. That's rare for a racer her age, but Thursday's breakthrough was huge. In only 14 career slalom starts, she has seven top-10s, two third-place finishes and now a landmark victory.

She had the second-best time in the first run, 0.15 seconds behind Sweden's Frida Hansdotter, but made up for that and more in the second run to win by 0.29 seconds.

"I was inspecting the course the second run and I kept thinking to myself, 'Today's my day, this is it, this is the day,' " Shiffrin said. "Then I kept thinking, 'Well, I've been in this position before, where I'm so close you can almost taste the win, and then I thought about it too much and I gave it away.' So anytime any sort of a thought about winning, or what the result might be, or how the other girls are doing, anytime that sort of thinking crept into my head, I pushed it away and I just kept focusing on going as fast as I could go, doing the best that I could do. Thank God I did that, or else it might have turned out differently."

Shiffrin's mother, Eileen, follows Mikaela on the tour. Their joyful reunion after Thursday's race had to wait until pictures were taken in the finish area.

"I kept seeing her across the fence and I couldn't get to her," Shiffrin said. "It was so exciting, and there was all sorts of emotions running through everybody. I finally (reached) her, and it was like I could release some emotion. Hearing her say 'great job' and 'I love you' and 'I'm so proud of you' was just the best thing.

"That's when I started to realize I've worked so hard for this, and she's been here the whole time. My father, my whole family has been supporting me. Now all of a sudden there's something there that I've worked for, that I've accomplished, and it's wonderful."

Shiffrin has skied slalom well since she made the World Cup team in 2011, but she's been increasingly competitive this season in giant slalom as well.

"Having these accomplishments, making top 30 in GS, winning a slalom (Thursday), it just feels like I'm where I belong and I'm where I want to be and where I need to be," Shiffrin said. "No matter what happens off the hill, when I'm on the hill and I'm skiing like that, I feel like I'm at home."

John Meyer: 303-954-1616, or

Youngest American World Cup winners




— Source: U.S. Ski Team