American skier Mikaela Shiffrin won the women’s overall World Cup title for the fourth time in her career on Thursday, bouncing back from a disastrous performance at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Shiffrin finished second in the Super-G in Courchevel in the French Alps to give her an unas-sailable 236-point lead over her closest rival, Slova-kia’s Petra Vlhova, with two races left this season.
Vlhova, the defending champion, finished 17th, outside the top 15 scoring places. Ragnhild Mow-inckel of Norway won the race and immediately congratulated Shiffrin with a hug.
At 27, Shiffrin equals the record of her retired compatriot Lindsey Vonn by winning the crystal globe trophy for a fourth time.
She set up the win with a rare victory in the downhill 24 hours earlier. Shiffrin won three straight overall titles from 2017 to 2019 before the death of her father Jeff in 2020 led to her taking most of that year off.
It is a remarkable return to form for the Ameri-can, who failed to win a single medal at the Olym-pics.
Her loss of form in China was all the more in-explicable because she has finished in the top three 14 times this season, and recorded five victories.—APP
