OLYMPICS: Alpine skiing-Born again Shiffrin finds clarity to return to gold standard

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy – Mikaela Shiffrin won her first Olympic gold medal in eight years on Sunday, a victory that carried deep personal meaning for the 30-year-old American. For Shiffrin, it was her first Olympic triumph since her father’s death six years ago — marking the end of a long journey to focus purely on ski racing again.

“Everything in life that you do after you lose someone you love is like a new experience,” Shiffrin said after claiming the slalom title on the Olimpia delle Tofane, putting her disappointing Beijing 2022 Games behind her.

“It’s like being born again. I still have so many moments where I resist this. I don’t want to be in life without my dad.”

Her return to the sport was marked by injuries, self-doubt, and the slow rebuilding of trust in her own abilities.

“When I did get injured… my slalom was in a place that I felt was repeatable. And my giant slalom was not quite,” she said.

Even competing on the Olympic stage felt more complex than before.

“Yes, I think it’s harder,” she admitted when asked if excelling at the Games was more difficult than on the World Cup circuit. “I wouldn’t have said that in Sochi because I was like, what are we talking about? It’s just skiing.”

On Sunday, however, Shiffrin found the clarity she had been searching for.

“What was beautiful was that I actually felt that it was… it just felt like ski racing. It felt like another day on the mountain between the start and the finish,” she said.

Fine Margins

Shiffrin’s victory also highlighted how thin the line is between success and failure, even for a veteran with 108 World Cup wins. After a disappointing team combined race, she was reminded how much effort remains necessary to stay at the top.

“I can show up with however many victories… and they think it’s a given. And I’m like, this just goes to show how hard it is,” she said.

In the slalom, she beat Switzerland’s Camille Rast by 1.50 seconds — a margin nearly as large as the total gaps between first and second place in women’s Olympic slaloms since 1998.

“It felt like it was just on the limit… we’re just right nudging against the ceiling here,” she said.

Before the race, grief resurfaced.

“I sort of started to cry a little bit because I was thinking about my dad. Maybe today was the first time that I could actually accept this reality,” Shiffrin said, taking a quiet moment at the finish line.

Her mourning has been personal and internal rather than spiritual.

“Part of my journey through grief has been challenging because I don’t feel this thing that a lot of people talk about… this deep spiritual connection,” she explained. “People talk about feeling the presence, and I haven’t felt it in that way. I feel connected to him in my thoughts and in talking about him.”

Shiffrin credited her team for helping her reach this moment.

“The wonderful thing about this day was that I felt proud before it happened because of my team,” she said. “The message they gave me was disarmingly simple: it is as simple as skiing. It is something that I have within myself and we’ve trained and prepared for.”

-Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Ed Osmond/Reuters