Mikaela Shiffrin opens up about winning gold, Olympic pressure and grief after her father's death
Competing in her fourth Olympic Games, Mikaela Shiffrin said winning her third gold medal overall "does feel different."
"Every single experience has been wildly different," the 30-year-old said, reflecting on her Olympic career that now includes four total medals.
The American skier won gold in the women's slalom, her favorite event, after falling short in her first two races at the Milano Cortina Winter Games in Italy. She missed out on medals four years ago at the Beijing Olympics.
Shiffrin said she's dedicated 25 years of her life to skiing — but admitted a race could be over in a moment.
"But even with this slalom race, I felt on both the first run and the second run there was three or four different spots in my run that I could have been off the course in the blink of an eye," she said. "I felt like I was that close to the edge."
But she said that's what the sport demands.
"The world's best solemn skiing right now is, there's no room to be conservative in the way you tactically approach the gates," she said.
The skiing legend has won 108 World Cups, but said the Olympics are different — except for the race itself.
"The Olympics is different in every way except from start to finish," she said. "If I was fourth in a World Cup race, people would say, 'You'll get them next time.' And in the Olympics, it's like clickbait titles and headlines and articles for quite some time."
"It's been a journey"
Shiffrin's father, Jeff Shiffrin, unexpectedly died in 2020 at the age of 65.
Her win in the women's slalom is the first time Shiffrin has won an Olympic medal since his death.
"Winning an Olympic medal without him here was terrifying to me before I knew that it was. In Beijing, I didn't know I was scared of that," Shiffrin admitted.
When she finished competing at the Beijing Olympics, Shiffrin said she realized there was "some small bit of relief that I didn't have to experience winning an Olympic medal and my dad was not alive."
"So it's been a journey just to get to the moment where I could take this race day and say, 'I do want this moment. I want to execute the skiing and I also want him here,'" she said.
