“Skiing was always our thing. And that’s what made it so hard – just brutally hard – to keep on going when we lost my dad. When he was gone, I didn’t want to ski.” – Mikaela Shiffrin remembered how broken she was losing her biggest fan in 2020. She wanted to stop skiing, just because of how much she missed him. Eventually, she got back on the snow and was ready to let go of the grief holding her back. She started a new journey in her life, and on February 23, that journey saw a historic milestone.

Mikaela Shiffrin has won her 100th World Cup match, becoming the first female skier to do so. The 2-time Olympic Gold winner was already regarded as the greatest skier. But the 100-mark has a nice ring to it. Winning in Sestriere, Italy, the skier cemented her legacy in the sport. While the world is celebrating this achievement, let us go back right to the beginning, when Mikaela’s love story with the snow started.

It was love at second sight for the Olympic Champion

Every legendary story has a beginning. For Mikaela Shiffrin, her alpine story began when she was 4. Sharing with The Players’ Tribune Signature in April 2022, the 7-time World Champion vividly remembered her first-ever experience on the cold white sheets of snow: “The first day Mom and Dad finally let me ski in real powder on a real mountain. I was four years old. A little peanut.” Not that it was her first experience of skiing itself as she had to practice the right techniques in her driveway how to ski: “After months of practicing proper technique in the driveway — never letting us cheat and do “the pizza” to stop —  they finally let us run wild in the powder.”

Getting her 100th WC win, Mikaela Shiffrin has become synonymous with consistency, quality, and skill. But her first encounter was not exactly perfect: “My first time down, I went headfirst into a mound of fluffy powder and I was so small that I fully disappeared.” She continued the story, saying, “All you could see was two little legs sticking out of the snow. I remember thinking, Well, I’m trapped. This is my life now. I’m never getting out of here.”

Well, she forgot her biggest fan was right there to save the day: “Then the hands of a giant came out of the sky and scooped me out by my legs. I was hanging upside down, and I saw the face of my dad, laughing – “Do you want to go home?”” Mikaela misses the friendship she had with her dad, how her dad would call her Princess, and how he protected her and made her feel special. The 29-year-old skier went on saying how on, “The next run, I remember him telling me — and I don’t know if this is just a dream of a memory, or if it was a real memory — but I can hear his voice so clearly….“Hey, Neon, you’re maybe gonna wanna put your weight back a little more so your skis will cruise right over the powder, O.K.?””

Mikaela herself described her father giving the advice so calmly, just like a friendly suggestion from a well-wisher. And it changed everything. You gotta love doing something to be great at it. You gotta feel it in your beating heart, the thrill, the excitement, the joy. That suggestion from her father did exactly that. The 2014 Olympics Gold winner said, “I went from getting buried alive and nearly having a panic attack to wanting to stay out there until my toes were frozen solid. I could not be bribed.”

This time, when her dad asked her if she wanted to go home, her answer was different. She wanted to never leave the snow. Mikaela had found her love. She added, “I remember I got my first real racing suit not long after that. It was purple. I refused to take it off. I would wear it to bed every night.” The snow was her favorite place to be. It was not just a hobby for her. She was planning to be the best navigator of the snowy journey: “A few years later, when I was nine, I wrote in my journal, “I want to be the best in the world.””

To be honest, she had already achieved that way before February 23, 2025. She had her second Olympic Gold back in 2018. But this 100th win has helped her create a bigger gap with her current competitors. In such a scenario, it’s curious what the record maker is thinking of herself.

Mikaela Shiffrin is feeling a winner, and not just because of the 100

Speaking to Self after the win, Mikaela let out her honest confession: “In the past, I have shied away from the numbers questions. The records were never something I set out to achieve.” Continuing, she went, “My goal was to be one of the greatest ski racers in the world—not one of the greatest ski racers of all time, just at any given moment in time.”

She recalled her childhood dream of wanting to be the best: “When I was a little girl, I dreamt about winning the overall globe—the overall World Cup season title—as well as the individual slalom and giant slalom globes [two of the individual disciplines that make up the World Cup].”

She has achieved it, and then some. To win 100 WC wins by the age of 29 is just astounding and sheer greatness. More importantly, we don’t see her slowing down anytime soon. The Winter Olympics is in 2026. She is just way too special, especially if you consider what she went through the last few months. She had a harrowing stab wound accident on the track in December 2024. While people thought she would stay sidelined longer, she was already back on the track around the middle of January. Those circumstances make her a real-life superhero.

When asked if she thought she could get the 100th win so soon after the injury, the Champion said, “Coming back this season at all is a win, and then coming back so soon is, in and of itself, another physical and mental barrier overcome.” Even though the injury had made her cautious, she and her team didn’t count out a win: “The victory count was just so off our radar. Still, we didn’t count anything out.”