Inside Mikaela Shiffrin’s journey to a golden Olympic redemption
For more than three hours on Feb. 10, Mikaela Shiffrin and her team hashed through how a day that had begun with so much promise had turned nightmarish. The American Alpine skiing star had spent the past four years answering questions about a disastrous showing at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, where the greatest skier in history had crashed three times in six races and left China with zero medals.
Now, an ugly run in her first race at the 2026 Games — the slalom half of the team combined event, in which a slalom skier and speed skier each take a run in their specialty and the best combined time wins — had cost her and Breezy Johnson a medal. The questions about Shiffrin having an Olympic hex were coming at her again. This was exactly how Shiffrin, her coaches and her psychologist didn’t want to start her Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
Now they needed to find a path forward, a way to keep the Games from heading sideways once more. Shiffrin’s mother, Eileen, a former competitive skier who still helps coach her, had even floated the idea of skipping the Olympics, because she was worried that her daughter might not be able to endure a reprise of Beijing. Shiffrin had dismissed the idea, choosing instead to work through the tears with her longtime psychologist.
It was nearly 9 p. m. when Johnson, one of Shiffrin’s oldest and closest friends on the U.
S. team, entered the room. She told Shiffrin she didn’t need to feel bad.
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