The Most Dominant American Athlete of the Past 40 Years
Who has been the most dominant American athlete in the last 40 years? Michael Jordan? Tiger Woods? Tom Brady? Barry Bonds (excuse the steroids for purposes of this discussion)? Simone Biles? Serena Williams? I would suggest the answer is "None of the above."
My money is on someone you may never even have heard of. Or if you do recall her, it is likely in her moment of failure: Mikaela Shiffrin.
For those of you who are not regularly up at 4 AM Eastern Standard Time or don't subscribe to Peacock or Ski and Snowboard Live, you have been missing the opportunity to witness an artist at work. Michelangelo on skis.
Mikaela Shiffrin entered the lexicon at age 16, a dozen years ago. She burst onto the international stage fully formed and began winning World Cup races, the equivalent of let's say a tournament win in tennis, with metronomic frequency. And she has not stopped since.
There are four different disciplines in World Cup skiing, four races of varying length and steepness, each posing its own unique set of challenges. Two relying on a willingness to accept the reality of hurtling down the hill at impossible speed, always but a tiny error from almost certain calamity. The other two relying more on the grace of Baryshnikov and the reflexes and agility of a cat. Each impossibly hard. To be the best in the world, one time, in any of these endeavors, beyond measure. To do it again, amazing. To stand at the top of the podium in each discipline, virtually indescribable. To be the winner 95 times and counting: Mikaela. Not only in the one arena, slalom where she has been virtually without serious challenge until recent years, but in all four. Floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.
Lindsey Vonn captured our attention and many of our hearts, in the years immediately preceding the full ascension of Mikaela. Lindsey hurled her body down the slope, damn the risk. She was the queen of the downhill, the longest, fastest, most dangerous event in Alpine skiing. When she retired with 82 wins, her body of work was complete and her body seemingly done. Hers was the high water mark, the one it was thought might take decades for another to challenge.
On the men's side, Ingemar Stenmark long since retired with 86 victories, has a record never remotely threatened. In fact, only one other male accumulated more than 50 victories in a career. As for the women, the nearest to Vonn (apart from Shiffrin eclipsing her) retired with 20 less wins than Vonn gathered.
Even as I am in the process of writing this, the unthinkable has just occurred. Mikaela Shiffrin, traveling at 70 MPH, has now crashed during a downhill run. Crumpled into protective netting lining the course. Not moving. And the feed got cut immediately after for several minutes. When it returned there was the sight of Shiffrin, unable to put any weight on one leg, clearly hurt, the rest of her season seeming to have disappeared in a split second.
Just a week or so earlier, her boyfriend, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, one of the absolute top downhill skiers in the world, suffered serious injuries in a downhill race. And within days thereafter, Petra Vlhova, Shiffrin's main rival in slalom, the most technical of all races, tore her ACL in a fall. It can be a brutal and unforgiving sport. Laden with the possibility of disaster at every turn.
Which makes what Shiffrin has accomplished even more remarkable. She has, until this very day, taken on the challenges of the mountain without frightening consequence. Year after year, traveling thousands of miles week after week to uncertain and often unforgiving conditions, conquering fears and adversaries with relentless precision.
There was that bobble in the last Olympics, where on the biggest stage she fell to earth. And there have been other disappointments that dotted the landscape.
But no one has ever dominated this sport as consistently as she has. And when you compare the percentage of times she has claimed victory, it ranks favorably with the best in other individual sports, Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, Serena, Woods, Nicklaus and the rest. Even as they also faced adversity from those who came to stare them down, and from the rigors of their undertaking on their bodies, none can claim more significant obstacles in the pursuit of greatness than Shiffrin.
Yes, Jordan may well have changed the landscape of his sport. And Brady has more than a fistful of Super Bowl rings. But if you have had the pleasure and privilege to watch Mikaela Shiffrin climb every mountain for more than a decade, you would have witnessed something unimaginably beautiful and startlingly powerful.
This morning I wait anxiously for news of the severity of the damage to Mikaela. I hope for the best, for a speedy and full recovery. Both in mind and body.
And I look forward to the day the countdown to 100 begins again.
Mikaela Shiffrin. Simply the best.