In the Norwegian spring chill at Hafjell, Mikaela Shiffrin secured her place alongside a legend. The American clinched a record-equalling sixth women’s overall World Cup title on the final day of the season, drawing level with Annemarie Moser-Pröll’s mark that had stood alone since the 1970s.
Seventeenth after one run, champion after two
The title came down to the wire in the season-ending giant slalom. Entering the race with a slender lead, Shiffrin needed only a top-15 finish to hold off Germany’s Emma Aicher. When her first run placed her a tense 17th and Aicher sat in third, the arithmetic narrowed sharply.
Shiffrin admitted the moment rattled her. “I was a little bit nervous in general,” she said. Her one-word summary of the first-run standings was blunt: “uh-oh.”
On her second run, she delivered the seventh-fastest time of the field. The attack lifted her six places into 11th, sealing the globe before Aicher even pushed out of the start gate. The challenger finished 12th, leaving Shiffrin clear at the top by 87 points.
Six globes across three decades of dominance
The achievement places Shiffrin in direct dialogue with Moser-Pröll, who won five straight titles from 1971–75 and a sixth in 1979. Shiffrin’s own overall haul has been staggered across eras: three consecutive from 2017 to 2019, then bookend victories in 2022, 2023 and now 2026. Only Marcel Hirscher, with eight on the men’s side, owns more.
The American reached this milestone racing a slimmed-down programme, entering no downhill events all winter for the first time in a title season. She instead built her campaign on a record ninth slalom Crystal Globe, winning nine of ten slalom races and collecting 980 of a possible 1,000 discipline points.
“It’s quite emotional,” Shiffrin told reporters afterwards. “This thing sums up a whole season of work and fighting with the whole team.” She praised Aicher’s skiing as “outstanding” and conceded the day required a deliberate mental shift. “I felt much more fluid and relaxed, even though I was actually quite stressed.”
Six titles in the books, and a 31-year-old champion still leaving the door ajar for more.
