CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — Mikaela Shiffrin stood atop the Olympic podium, looking almost in disbelief at the gold medal around her neck.
The American skiing star hadn't simply won a slalom race to end her eight-year medal drought at the Winter Games and underline her status as surely the greatest Alpine skier of all time.
She’d also won a battle with herself.
“It’s like,” Shiffrin said, before pausing, “... being born again.”
Racing in what she described as a "spiritual state," Shiffrin put in two dominant runs in gorgeous conditions amid the jagged peaks of the Dolomites to win by a massive 1.50 seconds, making her the first American skier to win three Alpine gold medals.
In emotional scenes after the race, the 30-year-old Shiffrin was embraced by Camille Rast of Switzerland, who took silver, and bronze-medalist Anna Swenn Larsson before fighting back tears as she approached her mom and coach, Eileen, for a long, deep hug next to the finish area.
Through it all, Shiffrin said, she never stopped thinking about her father, Jeff, who died at the age of 65 in an accident at the family home in Colorado in February 2020.
“This was a moment I have dreamed about — I’ve also been very scared of this moment,” Shiffrin said. “Everything in life that you do after you lose someone you love is like a new experience.
“And,” she added, her voice starting to tremble, “I still have so many moments where I resist this. I don’t want to be in life without my dad. And maybe today was the first time that I could actually accept this, like, reality.”
It was the largest margin of victory in any Olympic Alpine skiing event since 1998 and the third biggest in women’s slalom — the event she won as a fresh-faced 18-year-old in Sochi in 2014 to buttress her rising status as a skiing superstar.
Twelve years later — and having failed to meet huge expectations at the 2022 Olympics, become the most successful World Cup skier of all time with a record 108 victories, and overcome the two biggest crashes of her career and an ensuing battle with post-traumatic stress disorder — she delivered again in her favorite event.
Her skiing career, in a sense, had just come full circle.
“Maybe,” she added, “just today, I realized what happened to me in Sochi.”
At the medal ceremony, she shook both of her hands by her side as she was about to receive her medal. When it was placed around her neck, she put one hand to her mouth.
For Shiffrin, this also was a release of the pressure that had been building after going eight Olympic races without a medal since adding gold and silver to her collection in Pyeongchang in 2018.
A nightmarish 0-for-6 performance in Beijing was followed in Cortina this year by a fourth-place finish in the team combined — when Shiffrin placed 15th in the slalom portion after teammate Breezy Johnson led the downhill leg — and then 11th place in the giant slalom.
It was fodder for the “keyboard warriors,” Shiffrin acknowledged, but she ignored all of them in a masterpiece Tuesday.
“I couldn’t think of a more well-deserved medal for an athlete to win,” said Sophie Goldschmidt, president and CEO of the U.S Ski and Snowboard Association. “She’s been so dominant but as we know these big sporting moments in the Olympics bring extra pressure and scrutiny. And to see her ski that well and just go for it, I couldn’t be prouder of her.”
Shiffrin has now won three golds and a silver at the Olympics to add to her record total of World Cup wins — which include 71 in slalom, also a record. There’s also world titles in slalom (four), giant slalom and super-G to fill out arguably the greatest career in Alpine racing.
“In another league,” was how Larsson put it.
Shiffrin led by 0.82 seconds after the first run on a mostly flat course that Team USA officials described to her over the radio as a “high-tempo ripper.”
There was one wobble when she struck a gate and for a fraction of a second, it appeared she was headed for another Olympic disappointment.
Not this time.
She snapped back into form to post a time, in the No. 7 bib, no one could get near.
“When I saw one second (behind) after the first run,” Rast said, “I was like, ‘OK, the gold is gone.’”
While she attempted to nap before her second run, Shiffrin said she started to cry because she was thinking about her dad.
“And then,” she added, “I was thinking about the fact that I actually can show up today and honestly say in the start gate that I have all the tools that are necessary to do my best skiing, and to earn that moment.”
Given her emotions, Shiffrin’s second run was impressively smooth as she got through the tough top section without a hitch and pushed through the slower middle section.
After crossing the finish line, Shiffrin slowly squatted and took a private moment to think about all the people who'd got her to this moment.
“I felt every range of emotion in the last three months, the last four months, the last four years, the last eight years,” Shiffrin said. “There’s so many different journeys I’ve been on to just be here today.”
___
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics