Mikaela Shiffrin talks grief, victory, resetting records in Alpine skiing
All season, Mikaela Shiffrin reached heights that exceeded expectations and imaginations. Shiffrin won 14 World Cup races to reach 88 victories, breaking Inegmar Stenmark’s career record. An encore of Shiffrin’s record-breaking 87th World Cup win airs on NBC on Sunday from 12-1 p.m. ET.
The double Olympic champion discussed what the season meant, how she’s still wrestling with grief and lessons learned on and off the slopes.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OlympicTalk: All season long, there has been so much hype around you breaking the record and reaching 87. It’s interesting because it seems like that’s not what has mattered most to you all season. You compete because you genuinely love skiing. How were you able to keep your focus on your love for the sport rather than reaching 87 all season, when that’s the narrative around you?
Mikaela Shiffrin: Thank you. That’s a really thoughtful way to ask the question. It’s been a little bit challenging because everybody has been talking so much about the record. The last few weeks, especially leading up to the actual moment when I did reset it, I felt a lot of noise in my head that was sort of outside what I wanted to be focusing on.
But when I’m skiing, the feeling that I get is something I can focus on because I love it so much. Making a really strong, powerful fast turn is kind of hard to explain, but it’s like you step on the accelerator of a really nice car, and you’re just like, whoa. … It’s just a cool feeling. If I really hyper focus on that, then everything else kind of falls away.
You’ve talked about how those winning moments in reality are actually a blur, just two minutes of your life. You’ve heard from Ingemar Stenmark, and then