Mikaela Shiffrin began 2018 with a New Year's Day victory in Oslo. She ended it with the most World Cup wins by any competitor in a calendar year, surpassing her childhood idol as the most successful female slalom skier in history.
Her victory in Saturday's slalom at Semmering in Austria was the 23-year-old American's 15th World Cup win of 2018 and 36th overall in slalom, beating the record of the Austrian great Marlies Schild.
It did not come easy. Under pressure from her arch rival Petra Vlhova, Shiffrin held off the charging Slovak by 0.29 seconds after two runs on the Zauberberg, with Swiss Wendy Holdener in third place.
A disappointing fifth place in giant slalom the day before, in a race won by Vlhova, had left seeds of doubt. But Shiffrin reasserted her dominance in slalom to claim her 51st World Cup win in all disciplines.
Mikaela Shiffrin squanders chance for 51st World Cup win in Austria
It also broke her out of a tie for 14 wins in a year, a record she shared with Austrian Marcel Hirscher, who has also proved dominant in 2018.
Neither will race again until the New Year's Day event in Oslo, where Shiffrin will look to win the parallel slalom event under the lights in the Norwegian capital for the second time in a row and begin 2019 in identical fashion.
For someone who professes to care little for records, Shiffrin's tally is remarkable but not her main driving force.