美国国家公共电台 NPR--Mikaela Shiffrin breaks the record for most alpine skiing World Cup race wins

Mikaela Shiffrin breaks the record for most alpine¹ skiing World Cup race wins

Transcript²

Mikaela Shiffrin, 27, won her 87th World Cup race on Saturday by hundredths of a second, breaking the overall career World Cup victory record.

With this victory, Shiffrin cements her place as one of the greatest skiers — and athletes — of all time.

Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark set the previous record for career race wins on the alpine skiing World Cup at age 32 in 1989. Shiffrin tied this record Friday before breaking it Saturday to become the winningest alpine skier³ in history.

If she stays healthy and keeps racing⁴, she could top 100 World Cup wins by the end of her career. She has three more races at next week's World Cup finals.

This victory came 12 years to the day after Shiffrin's first World Cup race in the Czech Republic at age 15. She won her first World Cup race at 17 at the same place in Sweden, where she set the world record Saturday.

In an interview in late February, she told NPR's A Martínez, "As much as winning feels great, winning ski races is like 5% of what I actually do." She said the day-in-day-out work of training happens all year, "and you dream about the race wins. But at the same time, that's such a small, small part of it."

Shiffrin has made the podium at the World Cup 136 times, more than half of the times she has raced.

This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity. NPR's Tom Goldman and Amy Held contributed reporting.

Sometimes in a string of races, when it goes really well, it's easy to let my mind wander and think about how great things are going and how I hope they keep going great. And as soon as I start thinking that, I have a tougher race and it brings me back down to Earth. The more you actually win, the more you realize how much work and effort it takes to win and to stay there. And it's a daily decision for me right now: Am I willing to do this work today or not? So far I haven't run into many days where I'm not willing to do it, if any.

Normally, if I'm really on point and I'm skiing my best, a majority of the time it results in a win. It's just that there are races I've won over my career where I didn't feel like I skied my best. And you can kind of fake it and think, "Well, that was great, it was a great day. I won and everything." But it's like you got by with it. You just barely got through. That's going to come up and catch you in the next race. If you let yourself get away with a lower standard of skiing, somebody else is going to come catch you and beat you probably consistently. So you have to keep that standard high.

On self-confidence and winning

I feel like confidence is not really part of it. That's kind of an unpopular opinion, because everybody, for my entire career, has always said, "You should have more confidence." I've had people tell me they would think I would have more self-esteem. Basically, I should have more confidence, and the difference between me winning and not winning is just simply confidence. And I really don't buy into that train of thought. The races that I've won, it's not been because of confidence. It's been because I feel self-assured in my skiing. If I do my skiing, it will probably go well, somewhere on the spectrum⁵ of success.

But I do not feel confident in what's going to happen. In fact, if you asked me about any given race, I normally think I'm not going to win the race. No matter what I accomplish in my career ... somebody out there is going to say something about how I'm still not good enough. No matter what I do, I'm not going to be good enough. And even over this last World Championships, winning three more medals and racking up the total to 14, I think, there are still people saying like, oh, well, this wasn't good or that wasn't good, or she didn't get the Olympic medals.

On being relatively⁶ unknown in the United States despite her achievements as one of the greatest alpine skiers ever

It's a little bit of a double-edged sword. In professional sports, being successful tends to mean that you come with some level of notoriety. If I for instance was based in Europe, I wouldn't be able to go to the grocery store without getting stopped five to 10 times. People in my hometown know, of course, it's just the hometown thing. But if I were to go to some major [U.S.] city, it's not likely that I'm going to get stopped that many times. So there's a level of privacy that I do get to enjoy. But for ski racing, it means that we have a ways to go in terms of increasing viewership of the sport, which brings in more sponsors, which brings in more money. And really, in the end, it allows other athletes to get more resources to do what I've been able to do through my career.

Because ski racing, it's not the NBA, it's not football. It's not on the level where athletes are able to make enough money to actually live their lives based on their careers. Most almost every single athlete, every single ski racer you talk to, will not have to have a second career because they want to, but they will have to have a second career out of necessity. And many are starting their second career during the ski racing career because there's just there's not enough income in it to really actually survive.

I'm in a really lucky position, but the whole goal would be to make it more possible for more athletes. So that's what I mean when I say a double-edged sword. I love to have my own privacy, but I also feel like that ends up hurting the potential for athletes to grow up in the sport and to enjoy it the way I've been able to.

On gender⁷ parity⁸ in professional skiing

I feel a certain level of pride representing a sport where the prize money is equal. Over the course of the season, there's no discrepancy⁹ in prize money. And that's something that kind of happened, it kind of just happened in ski racing. It wasn't something that we had to specifically fight for in my career.

1 alpine   

adj.高山的；n.高山植物

参考例句：

• Alpine flowers are abundant there.那里有很多高山地带的花。
• Its main attractions are alpine lakes and waterfalls .它以高山湖泊和瀑布群为主要特色。

2 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

3 skier   

n.滑雪运动员

参考例句：

• She is a skier who is unafraid of danger.她是一名敢于冒险的滑雪者。
• The skier skimmed across the snow.滑雪者飞快地滑过雪地。

4 racing   

n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的

参考例句：

• I was watching the racing on television last night.昨晚我在电视上看赛马。
• The two racing drivers fenced for a chance to gain the lead.两个赛车手伺机竞相领先。

5 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

6 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

7 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

8 parity   

n.平价，等价，比价，对等

参考例句：

• The two currencies have now reached parity.这两种货币现已达到同等价值。
• Women have yet to achieve wage or occupational parity in many fields.女性在很多领域还没能争取到薪金、职位方面的平等。

9 discrepancy   

n.不同；不符；差异；矛盾

参考例句：

• The discrepancy in their ages seemed not to matter.他们之间年龄的差异似乎没有多大关系。
• There was a discrepancy in the two reports of the accident.关于那次事故的两则报道有不一致之处。