That Mikaela Shiffrin clinched her record-tying sixth World Cup overall title — the biggest annual prize in ski racing — in a giant slalom of all events is a reminder of what she overcame to claim the big crystal globe for the first time since 2023.
Shiffrin wrapped up the title by placing in the top 15 in the last race of the 37-race World Cup campaign on Wednesday in Hafjell, Norway. She edged German Emma Aicher in total points in the first time the women’s overall came down to the last race of the season since 2015.
Shiffrin all but wrapped up the overall by winning Tuesday’s slalom — her 110th World Cup victory. Aicher needed to win Wednesday’s GS and have Shiffrin finish outside the top 15.
The standings take into account results across downhill (which Shiffrin hasn’t raced in two years), super-G (Shiffrin did three of eight races this season, best finish 22nd), giant slalom (raced all 10, best finish 3rd going into Wednesday) and slalom (won nine of 10 races).
Aicher, a 22-year-old raised in her mom’s native Sweden, is the only woman or man who skis all four race disciplines at a high level. She is a throwback in a time of skiers increasingly narrowing focus to two or three disciplines.
She also looks like an overall threat for years to come. At the start of 2025, Aicher’s best career World Cup finish was fifth. Going into Wednesday, she placed fifth or better in 16 races, including in nine of 11 after the Olympics.
“There’s a new era of the greatest overall skier, and I’m so excited to watch what she does in the future,” Shiffrin said Tuesday.
No skier wins an overall title on one discipline alone. While Shiffrin dominated the slalom this season, that wasn’t all too surprising (especially in the absence of longtime rival Petra Vlhova).
But Shiffrin needed GS points to buttress her overall hopes. How many she could attain was unclear at the start of the season.
In addition to having the most World Cup slalom wins in history (72), Shiffrin also has the most GS victories of any woman (22).
But then she crashed in a GS on Nov. 30, 2024, puncturing oblique muscles and nearly piercing organs.
As Shiffrin worked back up from walking normally to training GS again months later, she dealt with what she called “mental obstacles.”
She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in February 2025, then returned to GS racing for the last three races of the 2024-25 season with a best finish of 25th.
She prioritized giant slalom in her preseason training last fall, while repeatedly calling her GS abilities a “work in progress.”
In her first nine GS races this World Cup season, she finished between third and sixth on eight occasions — a significant improvement from the end of the 2024-25 season, and as it turned out, just enough to earn the overall season title.
“This is just a symbol of the work that my team is putting in and all the support I’ve had these years, especially the last three years, to get back to the chance to be that high level and to win a globe,” Shiffrin, who also missed a month and a half in the 2023-24 season after a downhill race crash, said after Tuesday’s slalom victory. “With the injuries and with everything, it took a big effort from my team.”
Of Shiffrin’s six overall title seasons, this year she raced her fewest speed events and for the first time no downhills.
Next season, Shiffrin can break her tie with 1970s Austrian legend Annemarie Moser-Pröll for the most women’s overall titles. The question is whether she will try to do it without the need for speed.
“One thing is certain for me,” Moser-Pröll said last year, according to the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, “Mikaela is and will remain the best ever.”
