Olympic ski champions Mikaela Shiffrin, Ted Ligety keep on winning

Olympic ski champions Mikaela Shiffrin and Ted Ligety didn’t take much of a break after the Sochi Games.

They simply put their gold medals in a safe place and set out to make more memories.

The whirlwind continued Saturday for America’s heroes when Shiffrin and Ligety won historic World Cup races in different countries.

Shiffrin, who at 18 become the youngest woman to win an Olympic slalom gold medal, became the youngest women to reach eight World Cup slalom wins with a victory at Are, Sweden.

Shiffrin finished .60 second ahead of Sweden’s Maria Pietilae-Holmer.

It was Shiffrin’s fourth slalom win of the season and it clinched her second straight World Cup event globe. Shiffrin, from Eagle-Vail, Colo., won her first World Cup slalom at Are on Dec. 12, 2012.

“I’m just really comfortable on slalom skis,” Shiffrin said after her win. “It feels so easy to me when I’m loose and I let my skis go and it just seems like they find the finish for me and I don’t have to work so hard.”

Shiffrin turns 19 on March 13. She won the Olympic slalom late last month after finishing fifth in her first Olympic giant slalom.

“My next goal is to win in GS,” Shiffrin said. “Hopefully I can get some good training in and have some confidence, because I know my GS skiing is fast enough to win, but I really have to do my best skiing and that seems to be slipping away from me a little bit.”

Ligety, who became the first American male to win two Olympic gold medals in Alpine skiing when he won the giant slalom in Sochi, followed up Saturday with another GS win at Kranjska Gora, Slovenia.

Ligety, 29, became the first World Cup skier to win six times at the same venue. Ligety led the first run by .42 and then held off Austria’s Benny Raich by .18 for the victory.

It was Ligety’s 23rd World Cup win, leaving him four behind Phil Mahre on the all-time U.S. list. Bode Miller leads all American men with 33 World Cup wins.

Saturday’s win moved Ligety to within 50 points of Austria’s Marcel Hirscher in the World Cup GS standings. The event title will be decided March 15 at the World Cup finals in Switzerland.