Alpine skiing-Born again Shiffrin finds clarity to return to gold standard

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 18 : Mikaela Shiffrin won her first Olympic gold medal in eight years on Sunday, but for the 30-year-old American it felt above all like the first since her father’s death six years ago — the culmination of a long journey to reach a place where the moment was just about ski racing once again.

“Everything in life that you do after you lose someone you love is like a new experience,” she said after claiming the slalom title on the Olimpia delle Tofane to put her Beijing 2022 Games blank behind her.

“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.”

That private struggle unfolded alongside a complicated sporting return marked by injury, self-doubts and the slow rebuilding of trust in her own skiing.

“When I did get injured… my slalom was in a place that I felt was repeatable. And my GS (giant slalom) was not quite,” she said.

Even the Olympic stage felt much more complicated than before.

“Yes,  I think it's harder,” she said when asked whether excelling at the Games was more difficult than on the World Cup circuit.

“I wouldn't have said that in Sochi (2014, when she won slalom gold) because I was like, what are we talking about? It's just skiing."

On Sunday, however, she found the clarity she had been searching for.

“What was beautiful was that I actually felt that it was… it just felt like ski racing. It felt like another day on the mountain between the start and the finish,” she said.

FINE MARGINS

Shiffrin's comments revealed how thin the margin remains between success and failure, regardless of experience. After a disappointing team combined race, she was reminded how much work she had to do despite her career all-time record 108