It is winter, but in Spain there was talk of skiing in summer, in the goodbye and tribute to Blanca Fernández Ochoa . While we cried to Blanca and with her the late Spanish alpine skiing, Mikaela Shiffrin was preparing to face her ninth season in the World Cup.

On Saturday, in the Zagreb Slalom, Slovak Petra Vlhová prevented him from adding his 65th victory in this competition, that of regularity. The one that establishes the authentic hierarchies beyond the successes in the summit appointments, subject to the permanent talent, but also to the punctual chance. With 64, only Marcel Hirscher (67), Lindsey Vonn (82) and Ingemar Stenmark (86) precede it in the all-time ranking. The Austrian and the American withdrew after last season at 30 and 34, respectively. The Swede, in 1989, at 33.

Stenmark, at the age of Shiffrin (24 years old) had 52 wins. Vonn, 13. Hirscher, 18. The absolute and comparative numbers of Shiffrin express that, for the first time in the history of skiing, someone, man or woman, is in a real disposition to reach 100 victories. A challenge of colossal dimensions and impact.

Double Olympic champion among other garments, born in Vail (Colorado), in the Rocky Mountains, Mikaela is a magnificent skier in all modalities, but gifted for those of skill (slalom and giant slalom). Unparalleled chronologically, since its early emergence in the elite has been setting records of precocity. Now his challenge has no age, but horizons. Uncertain by far away, but stimulating by accessible.

In the coming years, the best in theory of his career, those of physical fullness and psychological maturity, a Mikaela in normal conditions, not necessarily ideal, could climb up to those 100 victories with an average of seven per season. It is not a utopian objective. In the present, still mediated, it takes four. In the past he got 17.

If he acceded to such a personal peak, he would also crown generations of skiers of all nationalities, whom he represents from his own. Champions that would have existed to pursue their own goals and enable those who would come to assume the unisex culmination of the species. The joint triumph of genetics and evolution. If Mikaela reaches centenary, we will have to explain it through Messrs. Shiffrin and Charles Darwin .

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