Mikaela Shiffrin’s golden peace replaces eight years of heartbreak, pressure and grief

CNN

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (CNN) — When she finally crossed the finish line a second-and-a-half faster than anyone else, Mikaela Shiffrin did the strangest thing.

Nothing. She did nothing.

As the memory of eight races, four years and whatever other numbers that people used to reduce a lifetime of achievement into a dollop of futility finally, emphatically, disappeared – Shiffrin stood motionless.

The crowd around her erupted. Her poles dangled by her side. Her eyes looked back up the mountain.

Finally – in what felt like an eternity but really was only a few seconds – she quietly crouched down, bent her head over her skis and stared at the snow. To people who presume – because that is what we all do about athletes and famous people, we presume their emotions, their intentions, their thoughts – this was Shiffrin tossing the weight of the world off her back.

The greatest slalom skier in history had finally skied like the greatest slalom skier in history at the one race that most people pay attention to. Sandwiching together two epic runs, Shiffrin breezed to her first Olympic gold medal in eight years, her first in the slalom in 12, in what can only be termed a blowout. The 1.5-second gap between her and silver medalist Camille Rust may as well have been a canyon – that same difference separated Rust from 13th place Martina Peterlini of Italy.

Except at that moment, Shiffrin wasn’t thinking about the medal or the misses, the achievements or the failures. She was thinking about her dad.

An anesthesiologist in his day job and an avid photographer on the side, Jeff Shiffrin grew up skiing. Every weekend that he could, he’d trek from his New Jersey home to Vermont to hit the slopes, eventually parlaying that into a spot on the Dartmouth ski team. He and his wife, Eileen – also a skier – naturally turned their kids loose on the slopes.

In February 2020, Jeff Shiffrin slipped off the roof at their family’s home in Denver. Shiffrin and her mother, who were in Europe for competitions, flew home. Jeff died while his daughter lay with her head on his heart, hearing it take its last beat. Since then, Shiffrin agonized when people who’d similarly lost their loved ones said they felt their presence.

She just didn’t. “Like what the f**k?” she said. “Why do you get to feel that and I don’t?’’

When she stood at the base of the Olimpia delle Tofane, her time in green and her name atop the leaderboard, Shiffrin still didn’t feel her father; she felt something even stronger.

She felt at peace.

With his loss, with her skiing, with what all this epic journey of a career has meant.

“Everything in life you do after you lose someone you love is like a new experience,’’ Shiffrin said, the gold medal dangling just inside her Team USA jacket.

“It’s like being born again. And I still have so many moments where I resist this. I don’t want to be in this life without my dad but maybe today was the first time I could actually accept like, this is reality. And instead of thinking I would be going in this moment without him, to take the moment and be silent with him.’’

History rewrites her story

Hers was a victory of historic accomplishment.

She is now both the youngest (18) and oldest (30) woman to win Olympic Alpine gold, and the only winter Olympian to win the same event with a 12-year gap in between. She is the first US skier to capture three Olympic golds and won her latest by the largest slalom margin of victory since 1998. So many firsts, so many things to underscore Shiffrin’s impact on her sport.

This is what the public will cling to because this is what we know, what we’ve been allowed to see. So burdensome had Shiffrin’s failures become – the 0-for in Beijing in 2022 over six runs; the 15th place finish in the team combined here in Italy, followed by an 11th in the giant slalom – that they became her easy narrative. This is who Mikaela Shiffrin was, her entirety boiled down to a few minutes on a ski slope.

On a shuttle to the top of the mountain, a kindly older woman explained to an Olympic volunteer that she was from Vermont, not far from the Burke Mountain Academy where Shiffrin got her start, and while she didn’t know Shiffrin personally, she was pulling for her.

“I just hope she finishes,’’ the woman said with a sigh. “She’s had such a jinx. It’s so much pressure.’’

But while success – defining it and achieving it – is very much performed in the public eye, it is incredibly and deeply personal. We like to think we know what a person goes through; we just don’t.

Shiffrin certainly did not expect this to be her journey. Twelve years ago, she blasted onto the scene with the precociousness and innocence only an 18-year-old can bring. She won gold in the slalom in Sochi, revving up a hype machine that instantly turned her into the “Missy Franklin of skis,’’ matching Shiffrin to the teenage swim sensation of 2012.

Shiffrin fed the machine unintentionally, talking boldly about eyeing five golds at the next Olympics in PyeongChang. She proclaimed she wanted to be known as a multi-discipline innovator of her sport.

Because that’s what 18-year-olds do. Because they don’t know any better.

Asked now what she would tell the 18-year-old who blazed to gold in 2014, Shiffrin laughed derisively: “Buckle up.’’

But then, as is her wont, she thought about it a little more carefully and realized that offering advice would dim that girl’s light.

“I think back then I was more comfortable being uncertain,’’ she said. “That’s also because there was quite a lot less expectation, and I have an ever-evolving relationship with expectation. So, at that time, the world was my oyster.’’

Except then it went and clammed up on her.

‘I won.’

Weather delays and scheduling issues forced her out of the super-G and downhill in PyeongChang. She won a gold in giant slalom, a silver in super combined but in her best event, the slalom, took fourth.

Two years later, she lost her dad and then she lost in Beijing. She suffered a terrifying puncture wound in 2024 that saddled her with real post-traumatic stress and spent a good year wondering if she could even race the GS again.

The girl who boldly arrived on the scene in 2014 became, inevitably, as we all do, a 30-year-old adult who has been through some stuff by these Olympics.

Yet it is all of that Life – the successes, the failures, the loss, the fear – that allowed Shiffrin to do what she did here.

Three days ago, she sat down and wrote what would become a post-race Instagram post but was, at the time, more of a journal entry. More cerebral than emotive, Shiffrin had not been one to speak her thoughts into existence. Work with a psychologist following that 2024 injury had forced her out of her comfort zone.

“I’ve actually had to be loud with myself, to say, ‘You want a big mentality,’’’ she said. “’You want to earn the moment. You want to be there. You want to be in that starting gate and you want to take on the course ahead of you.’”

In the post she writes, “I won,’’ four times.

On race day, Shiffrin woke up at 1:30 in the morning, cozy and comfortable in her bed but keenly aware of the long day in front of her. She processed through all her emotions, reflecting on the journey as much as the moment that lay directly ahead.

“I have built this up in my own mind,’’ she said. “I’ve dreamed about it. I have been nervous for it. I’ve felt pressure, but also felt who cares?”

Which, then would she deliver? It would be lovely to say she knew, but she didn’t – not until she stepped into the starting gate for her first run. There, she threw down a blistering 47.13, putting her almost a full second (.82) ahead of second-place Lena Duerr. It was the equivalent of a lap lead.

All Shiffrin had to do, in effect, was finish and get the gold medal. In between runs she tried to nap. Instead, she started to cry, thinking about her dad.

A golden peace

She shook it aside, reminding herself that she had everything she needed to succeed – her health, the support of her fiancé, Alexander Aamodt Kilde, an extended personal team and a supportive Team USA.

In slalom, the top 30 finishers from the first run are inverted and from that pack emerges the medal winner. That meant Shiffrin went last.

After Duerr inexplicably failed to maneuver past the first gate – a visual reminder of her own DNF in this event in Beijing, when she skied out just seconds into her run – Shiffrin stepped into the starting gate.

The in-house DJ here likes to partner the moment with music. Some skiers got average techno or even old school 80s. The good ones, the ones with medals on the line, were met with what can only be described as an ominous beating gong. Four times Shiffrin skied to the soundtrack.

For once, it did not portend doom.

Later, after she hugged her mother, and waved to the crowd, Shiffrin re-emerged for the medal ceremony.

Standing behind the podium while Rust and bronze medalist Anna Swenn Larsson received their medals, she closed her eyes and exhaled, her shoulders shrugging with the effort. As her name was called, Shiffrin touched her hand to her lips and reached down to share the kiss with the snow that had delivered her back to the top. She shook her hands out by her side before finally exploding into a full-face smile.

When, finally, the gold medal was placed around her neck, Shiffrin grabbed hold of it, bowed her head and closed her eyes.

Mikaela Shiffrin was at peace.

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