Mikaela Shiffrin
Janica Kostelic
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Mikaela Shiffrin leads 3 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Mikaela Shiffrin at #1 and Janica Kostelic at #9.
The case for Mikaela Shiffrin
The most successful racer the World Cup has produced. Shiffrin won her first World Cup race at 17, took her first world slalom title at 17 and Olympic slalom gold at 18, and then kept accelerating: she passed Lindsey Vonn's women's record of 82 wins at Kranjska Gora in January 2023, passed Ingemar Stenmark's all-time record of 86 at Kronplatz days later, and won her 100th World Cup race in the Sestriere slalom on 23 February 2025, months after a serious abdominal injury in a crash at Killington. Her 2018-19 season — 17 victories and 2,204 points — is the single most dominant campaign in the history of either tour. She has five overall Crystal Globes, eight world championship golds, more than 60 slalom wins, and victories in all six World Cup disciplines including downhill and the parallel event. The only line on her record that stays open is Olympic gold beyond her two, in a sport where a single morning decides everything.
The case for Janica Kostelic
The greatest championship racer in alpine history, from a country with no ski culture, no federation money and almost no mountains suitable for World Cup racing. Kostelic trained across Europe out of a family car with her father as coach, and at Salt Lake City in 2002 won giant slalom, combined and slalom golds plus super-G silver — four medals at one Games, the most any alpine skier has taken, and a haul no woman has matched. She defended the combined title at Turin in 2006 for a fourth Olympic gold, level with Kjetil Andre Aamodt at the top of the sport's all-time list. She won three overall Crystal Globes and 30 World Cup races, and a hat-trick of golds at the 2003 world championships in St. Moritz. She retired at 25 after nine knee operations and a thyroid condition, having won everything available on a body that had effectively been rebuilt twice.