The Perfect Turn
The Perfect Turn. Every skier dreams of making the perfect turn. Skiers at the top of the heap dream of making complete runs full of perfect turns. One after another – whoosh, whoosh; endlessly, rhythmically.
Mikaela Shiffrin dreams of those turns. One would think this is only one of the aspirations for a World Cup racer – not for Mikaela. Maybe that explains her dominance. In a sport where Mother Nature has a say, and the conditions of one racer’s run can be dramatically different than another’s, Mikaela still dominates. In 2019 she won 17 races, a record. Over her 13-year career, her win rate is an astonishing 35% of all races she enters. She’s finished in the top 3 in over half her races. Mikaela’s the only skier to win gold in five consecutive World Championships, to win four single discipline season titles in a row, and to have World Cup victories in all six race disciplines. For those of you who look at that last stat and think skiing is skiing, you are absolutely wrong. The technique and skillset required to accel in downhill is vastly different than those of slalom, which is different to that of giant slalom, which is different to that of super-G. Then there’s the stamina required to win in the combined and parallel slalom events. She has four overall World Cup season titles and this year is well on her way to her fifth. She also has eight discipline season titles, with six in slalom, one in super-G and one in giant slalom.
This year, after three seasons whose flow was interrupted by COVID and her father’s sudden death, she appears to be back in a groove winning five races in a row before placing sixth in a giant slalom. The next day she came back, made some adjustments in the second GS, and won. That victory tied the immortal Lindsey Vonn for career World Cup victories with 82. Ingemar Stenmark holds the overall record of 86. At only 27, Mikaela is sure to break that. Barring serious injury, I think she will win 100 races before it’s over. That’s a mind-blowing stat.
Breaking onto the scene of the top echelon of skiing at the tender age of 15, Mikaela has always been something of a skiing savant. She won her first World Cup race at 17 and her first Olympic gold medal at 18, both the youngest ever. As this is her 13th season on the World Cup circuit, one wonders how much longer she will want to do this. So, what is it that drives her?
It’s the exhilaration of the perfect turn, and pursuit of the perfect run. That’s the give back, the reward. The perfect edge set that immediately produces the centrifugal force of a perfect carve, and then the exactly timed release, roll and entry into the next. The rhythm of connecting each turn, and the musical-like syncopation of rhythms accompanying the changing terrain and gates of each course. Putting all that together is what drives her – the feeling of perfection, of skiing nirvana. It’s skiing itself she still pursues. Not victories, not trophies, not championships. Skiing perfection. Mikaela’s the first world class athlete I know of who convincingly communicates that mantra as her primary motivation. It’s not money, not glory, not medals – it’s the act itself.
She hasn’t lost sight of why she started doing this. Mikaela still carries that fire of pursuit, the glory of perfection. Everything else is a distraction, with pressures she tries to recognize but dismiss from her psyche. Openly talking about it helps her communicate that to those of us who are on the outside, who do count the victories and the medals. We think the records matter. Mikaela only believes it’s the knowledge and exhilaration of perfection that matters. Hers is a much more meaningful and lasting pursuit.
