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Alyssa Roenigk
multiple authors
Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy – On Wednesday, Mikaela Shiffrin will enter the starting gate of the Olympic slalom as the favorite for gold. On Sunday, he took a big step toward that result.
Shiffrin was not expected to medal in Sunday’s giant slalom. Despite being the 2018 Olympic gold medalist and all-time World Cup wins leader in the event, Shiffrin only recently returned to the GS podium in January. Less than a year ago, she didn’t know if she would ever stand in another giant slalom start gate.
“After getting injured last year and then returning to GS racing, I was very far away,” Shiffrin said Sunday. “I felt like there was no hope of it getting any faster.”
That’s why her 11th-place finish in the giant slalom on Sunday felt like a victory for the 30-year-old and, all smiles in the mixed field after the race, she called it “a beautiful day of racing.” Shiffrin traversed the smooth, tight lines with confidence, saying she was pushing and “transforming nervous energy into intensity and taking power off the course.” His result was within a few tenths of the podium, which was a positive step in the right direction.
“To be here now, to be in touch with the fastest women, is huge for me,” Shiffrin said. “I’m proud.”
Fifteen months earlier in November 2024, Shiffrin had crashed in a GS race in Killington, Vermont, on the day she was attempting to win her 100th World Cup title in her home race. She lost her way and went into the safety net and once in the ambulance, doctors realized she had been impaled in the abdomen, possibly after hitting the slalom gate in the crash. His physical recovery from the injury was difficult. Her mental journey back to racing took longer.
Shiffrin has spoken openly about managing her struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. In an essay for The Players’ Tribune last May, she wrote that after the accident, her mind and body had become dislocated – the equivalent of ski racing “twisties.”
He wrote, “You need to be able to trust completely that what you see happening in your mind is completely connected to what you do with your body.” “If that connection is down…the threat level increases exponentially.”
Through therapy and exposure — and letting go of the consequences — Shiffrin began to find her footing again. When she stopped caring about times, podiums or medals, fear began to loosen its grip. In January, she finished third in the World Cup giant slalom, her first podium since the accident.
And then she came to the Olympics, where the expectations and pressure are inevitable and, unlike the World Cup circuit, another opportunity comes only once every four years. Several top athletes have succumbed to the pressure in the first week of these Games, including Shiffrin, who finished 15th out of 18 racers in last week’s team slalom leg, squandering the lead she had built after the downhill to her teammate Breezy Johnson.
That’s why on Sunday, she said she was taking only positives from her performance in the GS, a competition she has not raced consistently since her injury. “I was like, I don’t know, maybe I’ll never race a GS again,” Shiffrin said. “And here we are in a completely different situation, and it shows you can fight.”
Wednesday’s slalom will be different.
Slalom is Shiffrin’s best event. Seventy-one of her record 108 World Cup wins have come in slalom – more than any other skier in any discipline – and this season alone, she has won six of seven and has already collected her ninth slalom crystal globe.
But Shiffrin’s relationship with the Olympics is strained. She is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, yet has not earned a medal in her last eight Olympic Games. For Shiffrin, like most ski racers, success has been combined with crashes, injuries, setbacks and comebacks, as well as big wins in big moments when the world is watching.
At the age of 18, she became the youngest Olympic slalom champion in history in Sochi. She has not won an Olympic slalom gold since.
In PyeongChang, she walked away with giant slalom gold — and disappointment.
In Beijing, it was resolved. He was expected to medal in at least three of the six events, but he did not win a medal in any of them.
“I don’t want Beijing to be a reason for me to be afraid of the Olympics,” Shiffrin told Olympic.com last year. Shortly before arriving in Cortina, he recorded an episode of his podcast in which he talked about coming to terms with the awareness that “the Olympics are not designed to prioritize the comfort or performance of the athletes and teams who compete.”
In the season following her disappointing Beijing Games, Shiffrin broke the record for World Cup wins. She was plagued by injuries over the next two seasons, going undefeated in slalom this year and having a disappointing start to her fourth Olympics.
Even for the greatest of all time, success is not linear.
On Wednesday, Shiffrin has two tasks: trusting her mind and body — and giving herself the confidence to be the best in the world. She said she and her team had a “really amazing” session of slalom training and that she was heading into her final race with a new mindset and with more knowledge of what it takes to ski fast on this course.
“There were a lot of turns on the Team Combined day where I was pretty fast, and there were some turns where there was just a misalignment,” Shiffrin said. “And then my mentality wasn’t matching that day. So I’m going into it.” [Wednesday] Opening our eyes we can see exactly the same situation [to last week]. And I’ll try to handle it differently.”
Handling it differently on Wednesday could mean more than gold.
