Erik Arvidsson and Mikaela Shiffrin Win Juniors of the Year

By Published On: April 6th, 2016Comments Off on Erik Arvidsson and Mikaela Shiffrin Win Juniors of the Year

Perhaps it’s not as certain as taxes, but SkiRacing.com’s Junior of the Year title is a pretty sure bet.

For more than 40 years, we’ve singled out one male and one female junior racer, and our eye has been keen — Lindsey Vonn, Ted Ligety, Julia Mancuso and Marco Sullivan are just a few of the past winners.

This award, determined by our editorial board and presented at the U.S. National Alpine Championships each spring, has been part of the ski racing tradition since 1975. To date, our picks have gone on to earn 181 World Cup wins, 35 World Championship medals and 13 Olympic medals. The current USSA Alpine Development Director, Chip Knight, and current USSA President and CEO, Tiger Shaw, are also former Ski Racing Juniors of the Year.

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Other notable recipients of the award include Tamara McKinney, Steve Mahre, Christin Cooper, Diann Roffe, Tommy Moe, Jonna Mendes, Sarah Schleper, Tim Jitloff, Steven Nyman, Will Brandenburg, Resi Stiegler, Tommy Ford, Megan McJames, and Ryan Cochran-Siegle, among many others.

The two individuals SkiRacing.com chose to honor this year are outstanding athletes and even better people off the slopes. Their individual performances are impossible to ignore, and they have inspired both racers and fans at all levels across the ski racing world.

The two recipients of the 2016 SkiRacing.com Junior of the Year award are Erik Arvidsson and Mikaela Shiffrin.

Erik Arvidsson

After a minor knee injury sidelined the big Californian for much of the summer and fall prep period, Arvidsson enjoyed breakout results at the NorAm level. He then won World Junior Championship downhill gold in Sochi, Russia, leading the U.S. team to an historic showing of four athletes in the top 10.

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Arvidsson then closed out his Continental Cup season with a win and six other podium finishes en route to the NorAm SG and combined titles, ultimately finishing third in the overall standings and claiming World Cup starting rights in downhill, super G and combined for the 2016-17 season. Arvidsson also managed to snag a bronze medal in super G at the 2016 Nature Valley U.S. Alpine Championships.

“I’m really honored to receive the SkiRacing Junior of the Year Award,” Arvidsson said. “It’s pretty incredible to be in the company of Marco Sullivan, one of my heroes from when I was a young kid, and, obviously, Mikaela, who is an incredible racer on the World Cup now. It’s a nice way to cap off an awesome year for me.”

“I’m really honored to receive the SkiRacing Junior of the Year Award.”

“I didn’t start skiing ’til October, so it was sweet to get the training throughout the season and start ripping,” he added. “I really want to improve on my success in the Europa Cup and then I’m excited to get some World Cup starts next year and see what I can do.”

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Arvidsson has gold in his blood as his father, Par, is a former world record holder and was the 100 meter butterfly gold medalist for Sweden at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, Russia.

Mikaela Shiffrin

Wait, she’s still a junior?

Yep. While the name Mikaela Shiffrin is synonymous with the 2-second winning margins and gold medals of a proven World Cup veteran, she just celebrated her 21st birthday last month, making the slalom ace technically (so to speak) a junior for the past season.

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The World Cup star has been racing on the circuit since she was 15 years old and became the first U.S. slalom World Cup champion since Tamara McKinney in 1983-84. This season, Shiffrin faced adversity, suffering from a knee injury that caused her to miss several mid-season races. Of course, if no one told you she was injured, you may not even have realized she skipped a day on snow.

She won five World Cup slaloms, two before injury and three post. Four of her wins had margins larger than two seconds.

“I think if I got the title and won three races by over two seconds this year, it would have been a little too much, and then I’d be a little snooty, and it puts everything in perspective,” she said in early March after Frida Hansdotter of Sweden locked up this season’s slalom globe. “I think in those two months I was gone, I learned it’s not always about the globes. It’s also about how I ski on a day-to-day basis and how much I can push the sport, and this year. I’ve had three of my best slalom races of my career, so I have a lot to be thankful for.”

She now boasts 19 World Cup slalom wins, which ranks her seventh for all-time slalom wins — counting both genders — and double that of any other American career.

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Another amazing feat? She won the 2016 U.S. Alpine Championship slalom by nearly seven seconds, proving once again that she is the best slalom skier in the country. Actually, when you consider that she also claimed the national title in giant slalom this season, it’s safe to say that this self-proclaimed “goofball,” who now wins this title for the seventh time, is the best female tech skier in the U.S.

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About the Author: Gabbi Hall and Sean Higgins