Mikaela Shiffrin detailed what she called an “almost out-of-body experience” moments before her golden Olympic slalom run while speaking on TODAY on Monday.
She remembered being at the start gate in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on Feb. 18 and watching the skier in front of her, Lena Duerr of Germany, ski out early.
Shiffrin had a flashback to her own pain of 2022 — when she skied out early — then came back to reality and felt the presence of her team and family lifting her up as she was about to push out of the gate.
“My biggest fear going into the Games was that I would feel really isolated and alone,” she said. “And instead, they made me feel very supported and feel very together. In that moment of the second run of the slalom, it felt like they were skiing it with me, really. So I think about my dad (Jeff, who died in 2020), and I feel like that would be something he was really proud of, too, thinking about the right things in the right moment.”
Shiffrin was in New York City for a media tour after spending all winter in Europe. She had plenty of hardware to squeeze into her flight luggage.
Not only did Shiffrin win her third Olympic gold medal last month, but she also won her sixth World Cup overall title — and the large crystal globe trophy that comes with it — last week for season-long success from October to March.
After winning a World Cup slalom in Copper Mountain, Colorado (her home state), on Nov. 30, Shiffrin raced in Canada, then Switzerland, France, Austria, Slovenia, Austria again, Italy, Czechia, Italy again (for the Olympics), Sweden and finally Norway for last week’s World Cup Finals.
She was asked on TODAY if she saw her slalom gold in Cortina as “complete vindication” after not winning a medal in six races at the 2022 Beijing Games.
“I guess there is a little bit of everything,” Shiffrin said. “Cortina felt so much its own. It felt so separate from Beijing. But at the same time, there was, for sure, a bit of an external narrative about sort of the ghosts of Beijing and a curse and all this. I really do internalize all that. I see it, and I take it in, and I think, what if there is a curse?”
Shiffrin noted working with her psychologist during the Milan Cortina Games about “thinking logically.”
“Cortina felt like entirely its own entity, which it did, and to the point maybe too much, because right now it almost feels like it didn’t happen,” she said. “It’s crazy. We had so much racing afterwards. We had the rest of the World Cup season. So I just got back to the U.S., like two days ago from Norway. I don’t know where I am right now.”
Shiffrin, who turned 31 on March 13, said she plans to compete at least through next season. She can break her tie with 1970s Austrian legend Annemarie Moser-Pröll for the most women’s World Cup overall titles (both have six).
How much longer Shiffrin skis beyond that is to be determined.
That much was clear when TODAY anchor Craig Melvin told her with a smile, “We look forward to seeing you at the next Winter Olympics” in the French Alps in 2030.
“Very good, very good,” Shiffrin replied with a laugh. “We’ll talk later.”
