Notre Dame receives three new bells, including one from Paris Olympics
Notre Dame cathedral received new bells, including one used during the Paris Olympics, as the landmark prepares to reopen after a fire in 2019.
Good luck trying to catch Mikaela Shiffrin. Now or ever.
Shiffrin won her 100th World Cup race Sunday, less than three months after a crash in her first attempt at the milestone left her with a puncture wound in her abdomen and severe muscle trauma. It comes in her sixth race since returning from injury.
“These last weeks I felt like – today, lot of things had to go right for me and wrong for some others,” Shiffrin said, referring to Camille Rast skiing out near the end of the first run. “A lot of things had to go right in my direction for this to happen. But in the end, I did something right, too.”
When Shiffrin crossed the finish line of the slalom in Sestriere, Italy, she fell to the snow, overwhelmed by the moment and all it’s taken for her to get to it.
Shiffrin suffered a deep gash in her oblique muscles but was lucky to escape even worse injuries after being punctured by a still-unidentified object during the second run of the giant slalom in Killington, Vermont. She lost her edge, hitting one gate a full speed and somersaulting into another before coming to rest against the safety netting.
She’d had the lead, and the inside track to No. 100, after the first run.
“There’s a puncture and then basically whatever stabbed in there did a little dancey dance inside of my obliques and basically tore a cavern into my oblique muscles. That’s what’s causing bleeding and inflammation and just pain, in general,” Shiffrin said in a Dec. 4 update.
“This is another fairly ambiguous injury and really hard to put a timeline of when I’ll be either back on snow or back to racing,” she added.
Shiffrin would need a surgery in mid-December to ward off an infection, and she missed almost two months before returning to the World Cup circuit in Courchevel, France, on Jan. 30. She paired with Breezy Johnson to win the team combined at the world championships two weeks later, but said recovery would be an ongoing effort the rest of the season.
That was evident in the first two races in Sestriere, both GSs. She looked tentative on the longer, faster courses and was so far off the pace Saturday that she didn’t even qualify for the second run.
“All the other athletes are fighting and on their top form, and I’m trying to figure out where I even stand in the sport,” Shiffrin said after finishing fifth in the individual slalom at worlds, missing the podium by just 0.05 seconds. “That’s been maybe one of the biggest learning experiences of my career and I think it will continue through the end of the season.”
Now look at her. Not only back on the podium, but the very top of it. It also was Shiffrin’s 155th time on a World Cup podium, tying Ingemar Stenmark’s record.
“Everybody’s been so nice and so supportive, all of my teammates and competitors and coaches in the whole World Cup. And I’m so grateful. Thank you,” Shiffrin said, fighting tears. “And the fans, thank you. Thank you so much.”
Stenmark’s record of 86 World Cup wins overall was once considered untouchable, standing for 30-plus years despite the best efforts of Lindsey Vonn, Marcel Hirscher, Hermann Maier and Alberto Tomba. But Shiffrin not only broke Stenmark’s mark, getting her 87th win in March 2023, she has blown past it.
She has not said how much longer she’ll ski but, at 29, she’s still in the prime of her career. If she keeps winning at this rate – at least five races a season for the last 11 years, with the exception of the injury- and COVID-shortened 2020-21 season – Shiffrin will join Michael Phelps, LeBron James and Simone Biles on that rare list of athletes whose records truly are unbeatable.
Vonn is the next-closest to Shiffrin, with 82 wins. She came out of retirement this season, and hopes to race through the Milan Cortina Olympics next year.
Shiffrin, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, has never been driven by records or accolades. To the contrary, viewing her career through that limited prism has always made her uncomfortable. It’s the process that fuels her, that never-ending quest to get a little bit better every time she puts on skis or to see the work she’s been doing in training carry over to a race.
But she took a different view as she approached her 100th victory, trying to appreciate it because of the way others do. She’s also hoping to use the spotlight that comes with these milestones to bring attention to Share Winter, a foundation that brings winter sports to kids and communities that historically have not had access to them.
“I’ve talked to you all about this. ‘The numbers again, the records. I don’t want to talk about the records. I don’t think about the records.’ Even though that may be true, bringing energy to the sport is never a bad thing,” Shiffrin said before the season began.
“I’m feeling energized right now by people bringing up 100,” she added. “I think it’s incredible that people are still following along on this journey and are excited about it. I would say that’s an incredible positive.”