NATE BURLESON:
00:00:01
So many fans of Team USA thought Mikaela Shiffrin might never have another golden moment at the Winter Olympics. After missing out on medals four years ago and falling short in her first two races in Italy, the skiing legend won her favorite event this week, the women's slalom. She talked with Seth Doane about her journey to get back to the top of the podium. Congratulations. Thank you. This is your third gold. Yes. Does this one feel any different? Yes, it does feel different. I've been to four Olympics now, and every single experience has been wildly different. In this slalom race, it was really simple of the work that my team has put in. How about you, the work you did? I've dedicated at least 25 years of my life to be able to ski the way that I do. But even with the 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. You felt you were that close to the edge? I felt like I was that close to the edge. Because you were pushing yourself harder than you were comfortable with? No, it's kind of what fast skiing demands. And the world's best slalom skiing right now is there's no room to be conservative in the way you tactically approach the gates. You have to go straight at that thing. You point your ski tips straight at it, and somehow you need to end up about this far away from it. Can you describe the Olympics-level pressure? You've won 108 World Cups. You know what it's like to race. How different is the Olympics? The Olympics is different in every way except from start to finish. The race itself? The race itself. For me, after three other Olympics, I know what it feels like to win gold, and I know what that can do for your career. But it's not why I'm doing this. I came here for the turns between the start and finish. I came here to show up with my skiing and mentality. 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. But this period of time, I just didn't go on social media. I unsubscribed from all the articles and all the publications that I normally follow. To try to block everything out? Yeah, just to create a bubble around myself and my team together so we could show up with unity and cohesion. And they know what my concerns were, and, really, the concerns are criticism in the face of showing up with an underwhelming performance. You've admitted you were scared going into this.
MIKAELA SHIFFRIN:
00:02:35
Yeah. In a way, you could look at you and say, how can she still be scared? Every time I say her name, I say the winningest alpine skier of all time. Yeah, it's scary. Why do you get scared coming in? I think it's scary because for me personally, I care what people think. All the influencers are out there, and many are talking about, for my mental health, I'm going to cut toxic people out of my life. I'm not going to listen to the haters. I don't know how you can flip that switch. As an athlete, you have to separate yourself from the idea that titles are important, and you have to be able to separate yourself from that. And I just knew I wouldn't be able to do that in these last two weeks, so I didn't look. You talked a lot about thinking about your dad around that winning run. I wonder if your gold-medal win, this third, does that help you in any way in the grief in dealing with the loss of your dad? I don't think it helps, but I think the journey I've been on to accept this moment happened long before the moment.
SETH DOANE:
00:03:40
Except winning. Well, winning an Olympic medal without him here was terrifying to me before I knew that it was. In Beijing, I didn't know that I was scared of that. When I walked away from Beijing, I realized there was some small bit of relief that I didn't have to experience a world where I can win an Olympic medal and my dad is not alive. Because you wanted him there? I want him there. I want him on the other side of the phone. I want him there to walk me down the aisle. I don't want life without my dad alive. But here we are, six years into it. 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. Journey back to the top and another golden moment. Congrats. All right, coming up, the stories that you'll be talking about and what to watch.
