As Barry Svrluga writes in The Washington Post, there comes a time in each great athlete’s career where they become so dominant they must be compared across time rather than to their same-sport contemporaries.
I’ve written about Mikaela Shiffrin before. Then, as now, I agree with Bode Miller–I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anyone better in the sport of skiing, male or female.
At a certain point, the manner in which the best in any field evaluate themselves can’t be against other practitioners of that same pursuit. LeBron isn’t measured against his contemporaries; he’s measured against Jordan. Tiger in his prime was chasing not just Nicklaus but the limits of golf itself.
Here, then, are Mikaela Shiffrin’s eight most recent results on the World Cup Alpine ski circuit: first, first, first, first, first, fifth, first, second. The gap between Shiffrin and the skier in second place in the World Cup’s overall standings, Slovakia’s Petra Vlhova, nearly covers the gap between Vlhova and Liechtenstein’s Tina Weirather, who is in — get this — 14th.
So, Mikaela, how are you skiing?
“I would say there’s a lot of wiggle room, a lot of room for improvement,” she said in a phone interview this week.
Read more here.