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I've tried watching the NBA star game, a defense option. It was silly. I have not yet seen any of the amalgams of North American football activity ally, nor any of its schedules, associations or affiliations. I do not know who will choose Kyler Murray in the NFL draft. And do not ask me where baseball star Bryce Harper signs. Smart people say Phillies. I say the Maple Leafs, because I'm a dingbat.
Tell everyone you know: Bryce Harper goes to the Lakers. This should cause people to chuckle.
Let's talk about Mikaela Shiffrin. Because it is really the best story of this winter sports 2018-2019. The Colorado skier, who is only 23 years old, is in the middle of a season for the eternal. Over the weekend, Shiffrin won his fourth straight slalom world title.
Here is the list of alpine skiers, men or women, who have won four consecutive world championships in one discipline:
Nobody.
Well, no one except Shiffrin, who did it Saturday in Are, Sweden.
She was successful despite an illness that put her breathing on the test and threatened to derail her race. After his victory, Shiffrin told NBC that his mother, Eileen, had advised her before her second run: You do not have to do that.
But Shiffrin told herself what she said over and over again: "I need just 60 seconds."
So she did it, and she had it, adding to an alpine campaign that is staggering in her excellence. Shiffin is getting closer to his third World Cup title. She is ranked No. 1 on the planet in slalom, giant slalom and Super-G.
Mikaela Shiffrin participates in the women's slalom at the 2019 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships.
Photo:
fabrice coffrini / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
In women's skiing, there is Shiffrin and everyone. With the departure of compatriot Lindsey Vonn, an alpine icon who retired to the championships with a bronze medal downhill, the mountain is now Shiffrin's.
She deserved it. There are all sorts of statistical superlatives that you can deploy to show Shiffrin's dominance: these two (and soon to be three) World Cup combinations; his 56 individual victories in the World Cup; and, oh yes, his three Olympic medals, two of which are gold.
Shiffrin is already considered a serious threat to Ingemar Stenmark's record with 86 World Cup victories. Vonn completed with 82, although the 34-year-old would surely have reaped more if she had not suffered repeated injuries during her career.
Of course, Shiffrin might well end up chasing someone else's mark. Austria's brilliant Marcel Hirscher, 29, now has 68 World Cup victories and is close to his eighth consecutive Men's World Cup win. Yowza.
In a sense, Shiffrin is just starting. She has been a pro since she was a teenager but, other than injuries – never insured in this sport – she still has a lot of bonuses. It is quite possible that it will be at its peak when the Olympic Winter Games are held in Beijing in 2022.
Earlier this month, Vode and Bode Miller, a retired skier, had been talking about Shiffrin arguing over more alpine events, that she had the talent to win up to five racing at these championships and that she should not miss out on events like the combined, as she did last week.
Shiffrin responded via Instagram that she was "flattered". Vonn and Miller thought they could fight at five events at the Worlds. At the same time, Shiffrin hates everything that has been said about numbers and looking for records, or the notion that a race is an "easy" win for her.
It makes her look easy, but that's not the case, she says. Nowhere near.
"From the outside, people see records and statistics … these numbers dehumanize the sport and what each athlete is trying to achieve," Shiffrin wrote. "What I see is a huge mix of work, training, joy, grief, motivation, laughter, stress, sleepless nights, triumph, pain, doubt, certainty, more doubt, more work, more training, surprises, delayed flights, canceled flights. , lost luggage, long night trips, fresh, more work, adventure and some mixed errands there. "
Mikaela Shiffrin reacts in the finish area after the second round of the women's giant slalom event at the FIS 2019 Alpine Ski World Championships.
Photo:
Jonathan Nackstrand / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
It's hard work, even for the best. Ski reverberates with its cross-disciplinary disciplines, so there will always be those who want Shiffrin to push the boundaries of the sport. She can do it. She has a lot of time. She is practical.
"You start thinking," Yeah, maybe I'm unbeatable "- as soon as you start acting that way, you're defeated," Shiffrin told the Washington Post last month.
It must be a strange journey: to become a ski phenomenon, to win the Olympic gold medal as a teenager, to become a World Cup strength, then to win the gold medal at the Olympic Games, which is called " disappointing "because you did not win the competition (slalom). ) Everyone thought you would win. You now have 56 World Cup wins and people are asking for more, more, more.
This is what happens when you are as good as it is. But no one was as good as her. Mikaela Shiffrin is the new standard.
Write to Jason Gay at [email protected]
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