Mikaela Shiffrin Wiki: 5 Facts To Know About The 2018 Olympics Gold Medalist Skier

For years, Lindsay Vonn had been the face of alpine skiing for the United States Ski Team. However, Vonn has indicated that the 2018 Olympic Winter Games were more than likely her last Olympics. Fortunately, the United States Ski Team has a new skier ready to take the torch and carry on, and that is an alpine skier and slalom specialist, Mikaela Shiffrin. One of the most dominant women in her sport, alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin was born on March 13, 1995, in Vail, Colorado. Her parents, Jeff and Eileen Shiffrin, were both former competitive skiers before hanging up their gear to pursue careers in the medical field. It was there in Colorado that Mikaela Shiffrin was starting to learn how to ski herself at the age of 2, starting with a pair of plastic skis in her driveway. At the age of 8, her family moved to New Hampshire in 2003 near Lyme. While her dad was working as an anesthesiologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Mikaela Shiffrin began honing her skills through continuous sessions with her coach Rick Colt at Storrs Hill Ski Area, and with coach Kirk Dwyer at Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont. But unlike her peers, Mikaela Shiffrin did not compete in races whenever she could, instead choosing to perfect her techniques through repetitive drills on the slopes.

Mikaela Shiffrin’s father would eventually take a job back in Denver, Colorado but she would stay behind and continue attending school at Burke Mountain Academy along with her brother, Taylor. She began rising through the ranks in alpine skiing as soon as she was old enough to compete in FIS-sanctioned races. The minimum age requirement to compete in alpine skiing is 15-years-old. At just 15, she won a Northern American Cup super-combined race in December 2010 at Panorama in British Columbia, Canada. That was eighth FIS-level in which she had competed in.

Mikaela Shiffrin followed that up with three podiums in her next three North American races by being a runner-up in a super-G, third in a GS, and a victory in a slalom. The following week she won a pair of Nor-Am slalom races that were held at Sunday River, Maine. A month later she took the bronze medal at the FIS Junior World Ski Championships held in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. She would later make her World Cup debut on March 11, 2011, while competing in a giant slalom in the Czech Republic. Then in April, shortly after she turned 16, she won the slalom title at the National Championships in Winter Park, Colorado, becoming the youngest American skier to claim a national alpine crown. Mikaela Shiffrin marks all her helmets and skis with the acronym “ASFTTB,” which stands for Always Ski Faster than the Boys. This has been her long-time slogan and helps put into perspective how dominant she is in her sport. She always wins her sport by multiple seconds in a sport that is typically decided by tenths or hundredths of a second. She won her first World Cup slalom races at the age of 17 for the United States Ski Team. It took Lindsey Vonn the age of 20 to reach that milestone, and she’s been considered the most decorated female ski racer of all time.

Shiffrin won her first World Cup in December 2012 in a night slalom in Are, Sweden. She became the second youngest American to win an alpine World Cup event, behind only Judy Nagel who was only a few months older at the time. Shiffrin’s second win came only two weeks later in a night slalom at Zagreb, Croatia, with her third win coming only 11 days later in another night slalom in Flachau, Austria. After winning the slalom at the World Cup finals in Lenzerheide, she was able to secure the 2013 season title in the slalom discipline. Later that year Mikaela Shiffrin was able to graduate from high school on time in June from Burke Mountain Academy, even though she spent most of her last two years of school in Europe competing on the World Cup circuit. In 2014, at the young age of 18, Shiffrin competed in her first Winter Olympics as a representative of the United States Ski Team in Sochi. There, she won her first Olympic gold medal in slalom and placed 5th in the giant slalom. She would be the youngest woman ever to win an Olympic gold medal in slalom. That season she also won the World Cup slalom races in Flachau, Are and Lenzerheide, to secure a consecutive World Cup slalom title. She ended the season as the reigning Olympic and World Cup champion in slalom and that year was also named on of ESPNW’s Impact 25.

She has become one of the hottest women on Instagram, with her photos ranking as some of the sexiest on the social media network. She has over 593,000 Instagram followers on her account. In most of her photos, she can be seen giving model-like poses or working out and showing off her six-pack. Google “Mikaela Shiffrin Instagram photos,” and you’ll find many web pages dedicated to showing off some of the best of the best of her sexiest photos. Her Instagram handle is @mikaelashiffrin, and, at the time of publishing, she has posted 1,126 photos.

Shiffrin would open up in 2015 season in Solden, Austria. Even though she had some trouble at first, ending up outside the podium in the first three World Cup slalom races, but she emerged victorious in the races at Kuhtai, Austria; Zagreb, Croatia; Maribor, Slovenia; Are, Sweden; and Meribel, France. That season Shiffrin also won the World Championship in slalom that was held in Beaver Creek, Colorado which is next to her hometown of Vail, Colorado. In 2016 Shiffrin started her season in Aspen, Colorado and won the first two slaloms by a large margin. In her first race, she broke the record for the women’s slalom, getting 3.07 seconds over the runner-up. However, in December 2015, during the warm-up of the giant slalom in Are, Sweden, she fell and ended up injuring her knee and was out of completion for two months. She made a successful return on February 15, 2016, where she took her 18th victory in Crans-Montana. That year she won all five slaloms that she started. She missed the other five due to her injury, and she chose not to compete in the parallel slalom in Stockholm, Sweden.

The alpine ski racer had one more season to get through before heading to her second Olympics in 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. In her 2017 season, she was able to pull off another win in Levi, Finland. In her first World Cup race in Vermont, she was able to reach 5th place in the giant slalom, but she returned the next day to end in a first-place finish. The next month Shiffrin won her 11th straight World Cup in the slalom in Sestriere, Italy. Later that month she won the giant slalom in Semmering, Austria, her second career giant slalom win and her first solo giant slalom victory. The next day she got her third giant slalom victory, and her 25th World Cup win. Subsequently, she won the final race in Semmering on December 29, 2016, achieving her 26th World Cup victory and completing her sweep of races at the resort. At the World Championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland in February 2017, she won the gold medal in slalom and took the silver medal in the giant slalom. The gold medal was her third consecutive in slalom at the World Championships, and she became the first woman to achieve this in the World Cup era, the first since Germany’s own Christi Cranz in 1939, the last time the Worlds were held annually. The Olympic gold medalist competed for her 2018 season leading into the 2018 Olympic Winter Games. Between December 19 and January 9 she won 8 out of 9 races in the World Cup circuit. She made history again by winning the very first FIS parallel slalom in Courchevel, France. At the beginning of 2018, she competed in a City Event in Oslo, Norway, becoming the first woman ever to earn two wins in City Event.

In the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, after several days of weather delays and postponements, which had caused the first three and final two races to be held on consecutive days, she won the gold medal in the slalom and the silver medal in the super combined. Due to the weather postponements in the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, Shiffrin was not able to compete in the super-G due to the event being held the day after the slalom. By the end of the 2018 Olympics, she walked away with a gold medal and silver medal. After the Olympics she continued to compete, bringing her total number of World Cup victories to 31 with a total of 11 for that season. After the season was over, Shiffrin received the “Skieur d’Or” or the golden skier award, given by the international ski journalist association for the best alpine skier of the year.

One of the subplots of the 2018 Olympic Winter Games story was the showdown between Lindsey Vonn and her heir apparent, Shiffrin. The story came to its climax as the alpine skiing events continued. It was a faceoff that was a year in the making as Shiffrin's star continued to rise and was becoming the world's most dominant skiers - a title Vonn guarded as her own for so many years. They had rarely ever faced each other, let alone in an Olympic event, but it came down to the combined alpine skiing race, where Vonn unceremoniously passed the torch to Shiffrin, as Shiffrin won the event and took the gold medal. Vonn has hinted that the 2018 Olympic Winter Games were her last.

Shiffrin’s overall net worth is still to be determined. Her net worth is estimated to be around the six figures. If her net worth is already in the six figures at her age, she’s only getting started. With two gold medals and one silver medal from the Olympics, and three World Championship gold medals and one silver medal, her net worth will only skyrocket from here if she continues to have success in the world of alpine ski racing.