KILLINGTON, Vt. — Mikaela Shiffrin won her first World Cup race when she was 17, was an Olympic gold medalist a year later at the 2014 Sochi Games and was a two-time world champion by the time she was 19. Each title came in her specialty event, the slalom.
But Shiffrin is now 21 and unwilling to be pigeonholed. She wants it all.
Shiffrin is about to branch out from the safer, slower, meticulous world of slalom to tackle the daredevil, treacherous, high-speed races of downhill and super-G.
“When I was younger, I wanted to be one of the best skiers in the world — period — not the best slalom skier in the world,” Shiffrin said last week.