Mikaela Shiffrin’s World Cup winning run halted ahead of 2026 Winter Olympics

Mikaela Shiffrin arrived in Kranjska Gora hoping to extend the dominant form she had planned to carry into next month’s Milan–Cortina Winter Olympic Games. Instead, her impressive streak came to an end in Slovenia, where she narrowly missed out on victory in the World Cup slalom.

On Sunday, the American skiing icon finished second, just 0.14 seconds behind Switzerland’s Camille Rast, bringing her run of six consecutive slalom wins to a close. The defeat marked Shiffrin’s first loss of the 2025–26 Alpine World Cup season.

After the opening run, Shiffrin faced a slim deficit of 0.10 seconds, but Rast delivered another outstanding performance in the second leg. Clocking the fastest time once again with a run of 49.96 seconds, the reigning 2025 slalom world champion held her advantage to deny Shiffrin a seventh straight victory.

Despite falling short, the two-time Olympic gold medalist was quick to praise her rival. According to ESPN, Shiffrin warmly congratulated Rast in the finish area and acknowledged the level of skiing required to challenge her.

“Her skiing is incredibly strong, and you could feel it building race by race,” Shiffrin said. “She’s had a few mistakes in recent events that cost her time, but today, after watching her first run, I knew I had to go 120 percent just to have a chance. It was a huge, special day for her.”

Rather than dwelling on the narrow defeat, Shiffrin expressed satisfaction with her own performance. She explained that she entered the second run with a specific technical objective and felt she achieved exactly what she set out to do.

“I had a very clear goal for my skiing in the second run, and I felt like I nailed it,” she said. “I pushed as hard as I possibly could. There were tiny moments here and there, but that wasn’t lost time — it was just the result of going all in. I could feel the turns the way I wanted to feel them.”

The result comes just one week after Shiffrin edged Rast in a dramatic World Cup slalom in Semmering, Austria. On that occasion, Shiffrin overturned a first-run deficit to win by only 0.09 seconds, finishing with a combined time of 1:48.82. That victory marked the 106th World Cup win of her career, extending her all-time record in the sport.

Until Sunday’s race in Slovenia, Shiffrin had been unbeaten throughout the current season, with each of her victories coming by margins of more than 1.2 seconds — an extraordinary display of dominance at the highest level.

Although the streak has now ended, Shiffrin’s form remains a major statement heading into the 2026 Winter Olympics, where she and Rast are expected to renew their growing rivalry on the sport’s biggest stage.