How to watch Lindsey Vonn in her season debut

By Rachel ThompsonJan 15, 2019, 10:32 AM EST

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Lindsey Vonn‘s return to the World Cup circuit headlines a busy week in winter sports. Vonn, a three-time Olympic medalist and the winningest female skier in World Cup history, is expected to make her season debut in Italy on Friday and set to compete in all three speed races in Cortina. The 34-year-old was sidelined in the first part of the season with a knee injury. With 82 World Cup wins to her name, she’s four shy of the all-time record held by Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark. Vonn’s first race on Friday can be streamed live on NBC Sports Gold and will air later on NBCSN.

PyeongChang Olympic gold medalist Chloe Kim will compete in a halfpipe World Cup in Laax, Switzerland, on Saturday, which will air live on Olympic Channel. Arielle Gold, who shared the Olympic podium with Kim in 2018, is also expected to compete.

And in Estonia, 2018 Olympic gold medalist Jessie Diggins will compete at a cross-country skiing World Cup, along with two-time Olympians Sophie Caldwell and Sadie Bjornsen, both of whom have made World Cup podiums this season.

ALPINE SKIING WORLD CUP — Kronplatz & Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy; Wengen, Switzerland

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV/Streaming	NBC Sports Gold Streaming
Tuesday	4:00 a.m.	Women’s Giant Slalom (Run 1)	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	7:00 a.m.	Women’s Giant Slalom (Run 2)	Olympic Channel	NBC Sports Gold
	11:30 p.m.	Women’s Giant Slalom (Run 2)*	NBCSN
Friday	4:30 a.m.	Men’s Combined (Run 1)	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	6:00 a.m.	Women’s Downhill		NBC Sports Gold
	8:00 a.m.	Men’s Combined (Run 2)	Olympic Channel	NBC Sports Gold
	7:00 p.m.	Women’s Downhill*	NBCSN
Saturday	4:30 a.m.	Women’s Downhill	Olympic Channel	NBC Sports Gold
	6:30 a.m.	Men’s Downhill	Olympic Channel	NBC Sports Gold
Sunday	4:15 a.m.	Men’s Slalom (Run 1)	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	5:00 a.m.	Women’s Super-G	Olympic Channel	NBC Sports Gold
	7:00 a.m.	Men’s Slalom (Run 2)	Olympic Channel	NBC Sports Gold
	7:00 p.m.	Men’s Downhill*	NBCSN
	8:00 p.m.	Women’s Downhill*	NBCSN
	9:00 p.m.	Women’s Super-G*	NBCSN

*Same-day delay All races stream live on NBC Sports Gold for “Snow Pass” subscribers and will have a replay of the event. Click here for more info.

BIATHLON WORLD CUP — Ruhpolding, Germany

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV/Streaming	NBC Sports Gold Streaming
Thursday	5 a.m.	Men’s 10km Sprint*	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	8:30 a.m.	Women’s 7.5km Sprint	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	11 a.m.	Men’s 10km Sprint	Olympic Channel
	Noon	Women’s 7.5km Sprint*	Olympic Channel
Friday	8:30 a.m.	Men’s 4×7.5km Relay	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	4 p.m.	Men’s 4×7.5km Relay*	Olympic Channel
	6 p.m.	Men’s 4×7.5km Relay*	NBCSN
Saturday	8:30 a.m.	Women’s 4x6km Relay	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	5:30 p.m.	Women’s 4x6km Relay*	Olympic Channel
Sunday	6:15 a.m.	Men’s 15km Mass Start	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	8:40 a.m.	Women’s 12.5km Mass Start	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	4 p.m.	Men’s 15km Mass Start*	Olympic Channel
	5 p.m.	Women’s 12.5km Mass Start*	Olympic Channel
	6 p.m.	Women’s 12.5km Mass Start*	NBCSN

*Same-day delay All races stream live on NBC Sports Gold for “Snow Pass” subscribers and will have a replay of the event. Click here for more info.

BOBSLED AND SKELETON WORLD CUP — Innsbruck, Austria

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Streaming
Friday	3:15 a.m.	Men’s Skeleton (Run 1)		OlympicChannel.com
	5:05 a.m.	Men’s Skeleton (Run 2)		OlympicChannel.com
	8:30 a.m.	Women’s Skeleton (Run 1)		OlympicChannel.com
	9:00 a.m.	Men’s Skeleton*	Olympic Channel
	10:00 a.m.	Women’s Skeleton (Run 2)	Olympic Channel	OlympicChannel.com
Saturday	3:00 a.m.	Women’s Bobsled (Run 1)		OlympicChannel.com
	4:30 a.m.	Women’s Bobsled (Run 2)		OlympicChannel.com
	8:00 a.m.	Two-Man Bobsled (Run 1)		OlympicChannel.com
	9:30 a.m.	Two-Man Bobsled (Run 2)		OlympicChannel.com
	1:00 p.m.	Women’s Bobsled*	Olympic Channel
	2:00 p.m.	Two-Man Bobsled*	Olympic Channel
Sunday	8:00 a.m.	Four-Man Bobsled (Run 1)		OlympicChannel.com
	9:30 a.m.	Four-Man Bobsled (Run 2)	Olympic Channel	OlympicChannel.com
	10:00 p.m.	Women’s Bobsled*	NBCSN

*Same-day delay All races stream live on NBC Sports Gold for “Snow Pass” subscribers and will have a replay of the event. Click here for more info.

CROSS-COUNTRY WORLD CUP — Dresden, Germany; Otepaa, Estonia

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV/Streaming	NBC Sports Gold Streaming
Monday	12:00 a.m.	M&W Team Sprint	NBCSN
Saturday	6:55 a.m.	M&W Sprint	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	3:00 p.m.	M&W Sprint*	Olympic Channel
Sunday	3:30 a.m.	Women’s 10km Interval	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	7:00 a.m.	Men’s 15km Interval	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	1:30 p.m.	Women’s 10km Interval*	Olympic Channel

*Same-day delay All races stream live on NBC Sports Gold for “Snow Pass” subscribers and will have a replay of the event. Click here for more info.

CYCLO-CROSS WORLD CUP — Pont-Chateau, France

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV/Streaming	NBC Sports Gold Streaming
Sunday	7:30 a.m.	Women’s Elite	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	9:30 a.m.	Men’s Elite	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	11:00 a.m.	Women’s Elite*	Olympic Channel

*Same-day delay All races stream live on NBC Sports Gold for “Cycling Pass” subscribers and will have a replay of the event. Click here for more info.

FREESTYLE SKIING WORLD CUP — Lake Placid, NY; Idre Fjall, Sweden

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV/Streaming	NBC Sports Gold Streaming
Friday	11:00 a.m.	Moguls – Freestyle Cup		NBC Sports Gold
Saturday	5:30 a.m.	Ski Cross	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	5:00 p.m.	Moguls – Freestyle Cup*	NBC
	7:00 p.m.	Aerials – Freestyle Cup		NBC Sports Gold
Sunday	4:45 a.m.	Ski Cross	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	5:00 p.m.	Aerials – Freestyle Cup*	NBC

*Same-day delay All events stream live on NBC Sports Gold for “Snow Pass” subscribers and will have a replay of the event. Click here for more info.

MEN’S HANDBALL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV	Streaming
Saturday	12:00 p.m.	Main Round Game		OlympicChannel.com
	2:30 p.m.	Main Round Game		OlympicChannel.com
	6:30 p.m.	Main Round Game*	Olympic Channel
	7:30 p.m.	Main Round Game*	Olympic Channel
Sunday	12:00 p.m.	Main Round Game	Olympic Channel	OlympicChannel.com
	2:30 p.m.	Main Round Game	Olympic Channel	OlympicChannel.com

*Same-day delay Games stream live on OlympicChannel.com.

NORDIC COMBINED WORLD CUP — Chaux-Neuve, France

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV/Streaming	NBC Sports Gold Streaming
Friday	5:50 a.m.	Men’s HS118	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	9:50 a.m.	Men’s 5km	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
Saturday	5:20 a.m.	Men’s HS118	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	9:35 a.m.	Men’s 10km	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
Sunday	4:50 a.m.	Men’s HS118	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	7:20 a.m.	Men’s 15km	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold

*Same-day delay All races stream live on NBC Sports Gold for “Snow Pass” subscribers and will have a replay of the event. Click here for more info.

SKI JUMPING WORLD CUP — Zao, Japan; Zakopane, Poland

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV/Streaming	NBC Sports Gold Streaming
Friday	3:00 a.m.	Women’s Individual	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	12:00 p.m.	Men’s Individual (Qual)	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	1:30 p.m.	Women’s Individual*	Olympic Channel
Saturday	3:00 a.m.	Women’s Team	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	10:00 a.m.	Women’s Team*	Olympic Channel
	10:15 a.m.	Men’s Team	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	4:00 p.m.	Men’s Team*	Olympic Channel
Sunday	2:00 a.m.	Women’s Individual	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	10:00 a.m.	Men’s Individual	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	4:00 p.m.	Men’s Individual*	Olympic Channel
	5:00 p.m.	Women’s Individual*	Olympic Channel

*Same-day delay All events stream live on NBC Sports Gold for “Snow Pass” subscribers and will have a replay of the event. Click here for more info.

SNOWBOARDING WORLD CUP — Laax, Switzerland; Rogla, Slovenia

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV/Streaming	NBC Sports Gold Streaming
Friday	6:00 a.m.	Slopestyle	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	3:00 p.m.	Slopestyle*	Olympic Channel
Saturday	8:00 a.m.	Parallel Giant Slalom	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	11:30 a.m.	Halfpipe	Olympic Channel	NBC Sports Gold

*Same-day delay All events stream live on NBC Sports Gold for “Snow Pass” subscribers and will have a replay of the event. Click here for more info.

TRACK CYCLING WORLD CUP — Cambridge, New Zealand

Day	Time (ET)	Event	TV/Streaming	NBC Sports Gold Streaming
Friday	12:00 a.m.	Day 1	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
Saturday	12:00 a.m.	Day 2	OlympicChannel.com	NBC Sports Gold
	9:00 p.m.	Day 3	Olympic Channel	NBC Sports Gold

*Same-day delay All races stream live on NBC Sports Gold for “Cycling Pass” subscribers and will have a replay of the event. Click here for more info.

Mikaela Shiffrin finishes World Cup with one more win, two more records and a revelation

By OlympicTalkMar 19, 2023, 7:43 AM EDT

Mikaela Shiffrin finished a season defined by records with two more.

Shiffrin won the World Cup Finals giant slalom on the final day of the campaign, breaking her ties for the most career women’s giant slalom wins and most career podiums across all women’s World Cup races.

Shiffrin earned her record-extending 88th career World Cup victory, prevailing by six hundredths over Thea Louise Stjernesund of Norway combining times from two runs in Andorra on Sunday.

ALPINE SKIING WORLD CUP: Full Results

She won her 21st career GS, breaking her tie for the most all-time on the women’s World Cup with Vreni Schneider, a Swiss star of the 1980s and ’90s.

She made her 138th career World Cup podium across all events, breaking her tie for the most all-time on the women’s World Cup with Lindsey Vonn. Shiffrin earned her 138th podium in her 249th start, meaning she has finished in the top three in 55 percent of her World Cup races dating to her debut at age 15 in 2011.

Earlier this season, Shiffrin passed Vonn and then Ingemar Stenmark, a Swede of the 1970s and ’80s, for the most career Alpine skiing World Cup victories. She won 14 times from November through March, her second-best season after her record 17-win campaign of 2018-19.

In those years in between, Shiffrin endured the most difficult times of her life, was supplanted as the world’s top slalom skier and questioned her skiing like never before.

On Saturday afternoon, Shiffrin was asked what made the difference this fall and winter. There were multiple factors. She detailed one important one.

“I had a lot of problems with my memory,” she said in a press conference. “Not this season, so much, but last season and the season before that. I couldn’t remember courses. And when I was kind of going through this, I couldn’t keep mental energy for the second runs.”

Pre-race course inspection and the ability to retain that knowledge for a minute-long run over an hour later is integral to success in ski racing. Shiffrin is so meticulous and methodical in her training, historically prioritizing it over racing in her junior days, that inspection would seem to fit into her all-world preparation.

She didn’t understand how she lost that ability until she began working with a new sports psychologist last summer.

“That was a little bit like less focus on sports psychology and more focus on, like, psychology psychology and a little bit more grief counseling style,” she said. “Explaining what was actually going on in my brain, like chemical changes in the brain because of trauma. Not just grief, but actually the traumatic experience itself of knowing what happened to my dad, seeing him in the hospital, touching him after he was dead. Those are things that you can’t get out of your head. It had an impact. Clearly, it still does.”

Shiffrin had a “weird a-ha moment” after her first course inspection this season in November in Finland.

“I didn’t take that long to inspect, and I remembered the whole course,” she said. “Oh my gosh, I was like coming out of a cloud that I had been in for over two years.”

What followed was a win, of course, and a season that approached Shiffrin’s unrivaled 2018-19. Fourteen wins in 31 World Cup starts, her busiest season ever, and bagging the season titles in the overall, slalom and GS in runaways.

“After last season, I didn’t feel like I could get to a level with my skiing again where it was actually contending for the slalom globe,” she said. “And GS, I actually had a little bit more hope for, but then at the beginning of the season, I kind of counted myself out.

“I feel like my highest level of skiing has been higher than the previous couple of seasons, maybe higher than my whole career. My average level of skiing has been also higher than previous seasons, and my lowest level of skiing has also been higher.”

There are other reasons for the revival of dominance, though Shiffrin was also the world’s best skier last season (Olympics aside). She went out of her way on Saturday afternoon to credit her head coach of seven years, Mike Day, who left the team during the world championships after he was told he would not be retained for next season.

“He is as much a part of the success this entire season as he’s ever been,” said Shiffrin, who parted with Day to bring aboard Karin Harjo, the first woman to be her head coach as a pro.

Shiffrin’s greatest success this season began around the time she watched a a mid-December chairlift interview between retired Liechtenstein skier Tina Weirather and Italian Sofia Goggia, the world’s top downhiller. Goggia spoke about her disdain for mediocrity.

“Ever since then, pretty much every time I put on my skis, I’m like, ‘OK, don’t be mediocre today,’” Shiffrin said in January.

During the highest highs of this season, Shiffrin felt like she did in 2018-19.

“It is mind-boggling to me to be in a position again where I got to feel that kind of momentum through a season because after that [2018-19] season, I was like, this is never going to happen again, and my best days of my career are really behind me, which it was kind of sad to feel that at this point four years ago,” said Shiffrin, who turned 28 years old last week. “This season, if anything, it just proved that, take 17 wins [from 2018-19] aside or the records or all those things, it’s still possible to feel that kind of momentum.”

After one last victory Sunday, Shiffrin sat in the winner’s chair with another crystal globe and took questions from an interviewer. It was her boyfriend, Norwegian Alpine skier Aleksander Aamodt Kilde.

“Excited to come back and do it again next year,” she replied to one question.

“Yeah,” he wittily replied. “You will.”

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Mikaela Shiffrin ties Lindsey Vonn record at World Cup Finals

By OlympicTalkMar 18, 2023, 11:05 AM EDT

Mikaela Shiffrin tied Lindsey Vonn‘s female record with her 137th career Alpine skiing World Cup podium, taking third place in the slalom at the World Cup Finals in Andorra on Saturday.

Shiffrin, racing for the second time since breaking Ingemar Stenmark‘s career Alpine World Cup wins record last Saturday, finished 86 hundredths behind Olympic champion Petra Vlhova of Slovakia, combining times from two runs.

Shiffrin was fourth after the first run. The top two after the first run stayed in that order after the second run — Vlhova, followed by first-time podium finisher Leona Popovic (the best World Cup finish for a Croatian woman in 16 years).

“Every single race I feel the weight of having to be one of the best in the world no matter what the day is, which is actually quite a privilege, but some days it’s quite heavy,” Shiffrin said, according to the International Ski Federation (FIS). “But today it didn’t feel heavy. It just felt like a really good opportunity.”

Six of the 22 skiers skied out of the second run on soft snow.

In Shiffrin’s previous race at the season-ending Finals, she was 14th in Thursday’s super-G, which is not one of her primary events.

ALPINE SKIING: Full Results | Broadcast Schedule

Shiffrin earned her 137th podium in her 248th start, meaning she has finished in the top three in 55 percent of her World Cup races dating to her debut at age 15 in 2011.

The only men with more Alpine World Cup podiums are the Swede Stenmark (155) and Austrian Marcel Hirscher (138).

Shiffrin’s first chance to break her tie with Vonn comes in Sunday’s giant slalom, the last race of the season, live on Peacock.

Shiffrin, who broke Vonn’s female career wins record of 82 in January, clinched season titles in the overall, GS and slalom before the Finals.

Also Saturday, Swiss Marco Odermatt won the men’s giant slalom by 2.11 seconds — the largest margin of victory in any men’s World Cup race in four years — for his 13th World Cup victory this season, tying the men’s single-season record.

He also reached 2,042 points for the season, breaking Austrian Hermann Maier‘s men’s record of 2,000 points in one season from 1999-2000.

Slovenian Tina Maze holds the overall record of 2,414 points from 2012-13.

“We partied hard on Thursday,” after winning the World Cup Finals super-G, Odermatt said, according to FIS. “Today wasn’t easy because of those damn 2,000 points. I really wanted the podium today. So, another victory, two seconds ahead, I don’t know what to say.”

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