Mikaela Shiffrin opens up about grief after emotional slalom gold

For years, Mikaela Shiffrin has stood at the top of mountains carrying more than skis and expectation. On Wednesday in Cortina d’Ampezzo, she finally set something down.

“I don’t want to be in life without my dad”

After winning Olympic gold in slalom, the event that has defined her career, Shiffrin didn’t immediately talk about pressure, redemption, or records. Instead, she talked about her father.

“This was a moment I have dreamed about,” she said softly. “I’ve also been very scared of this moment.”

It wasn’t the race she feared. It was what the victory would mean without him. Jeff Shiffrin, her biggest supporter and a beloved presence in ski racing circles, died suddenly in 2020. Since then, every major milestone for Mikaela has come with an invisible asterisk, and every triumph has been joined with a heartache.

“Everything in life that you do after you lose someone you love is like a new experience,” she said. “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.”

Shiffrin paused, fighting tears.

“And maybe today was the first time that I could actually accept this reality,” she continued. “Instead of thinking I would be going in this moment without him, to take the moment to be silent with him.”

The numbers around Shiffrin are staggering. She owns 108 World Cup wins, the most in history. She has dominated her sport for more than a decade. But the Olympics have been complicated.

Since her last gold medal in PyeongChang eight years ago, she had gone eight Olympic races without a podium finish. For an athlete of her stature, that drought grew louder with every run. During the slalom in Cortina, her signature event, she skied like herself again, and when it was over, the emotions all came pouring out. Grief, she revealed, has not unfolded the way people often describe.

“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.”

She laughed through tears as she admitted something many mourners quietly think but rarely say aloud.

“Sometimes I’ve been resentful of the people who talk about feeling this person, like, ‘Oh, they’re here with me. They’re carrying me through this day.’ And I’m like, ‘Where?’ … ‘Why do you get to feel that? Why can’t it just be easier today?’”

In the days before the race, Shiffrin had been working closely with her psychologist and her team. She said she had been practicing being “much more externally vocal” with herself, leaning into what she called “a little manifesting moment.”

She even wrote a message to herself days before the competition. After the victory, she posted it publicly. Five paragraphs simply said: “I won.”

Then came the line that captured both disbelief and release:

“I won. I f***ing won. This, right here, is the lottery and I won.”

This win was about healing. In PyeongChang, her father stood in the cold, icicles forming in his mustache, hands on his hat, shouting in joy as she secured gold. This time, he wasn’t in the finish area. But in a way, he was there as a quiet presence Shiffrin no longer had to resist.

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