MILAN — A gold medal dangled around her neck and an invisible burden had been lifted from her shoulders as Mikaela Shiffrin entered an NBC studio Friday afternoon.
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Two days earlier, Shiffrin, 30, won her first Olympic gold medal since 2018 in giant slalom. Most athletes go a lifetime without winning so much as one Olympic medal. But since Shiffrin became the youngest skier to ever win an Olympic gold medal in slalom in 2014, expectations have been different for her. Since then, she has become the winningest skier in World Cup history. Yet her eight-year drought since she last won an Olympic medal had become as central to her résumé as her wins.
Shiffrin, who grew up in the sport in Edwards, Colorado, just outside of Vail, celebrated her slalom gold this week in part with an espresso martini, a celebratory drink she said was her first in two years.
Shiffrin spoke with NBC News about craving daily structure, what she tells herself — and what she needs her friends and family to tell her — to be her best on the course, and the mountain that means the most to her.
This Q&A has been edited and condensed for clarity.
NBC News: You said you hadn’t really drank for two years before that espresso martini, it made me think about the discipline you’ve had. I’m wondering if there are other things that you, to give yourself an edge, have cut out of your life the last couple years to prep for these games.
Shiffrin: I don’t know that there’s anything else that I’ve really cut out of my life in the way that I’ve really stayed away from alcohol, but I think the discipline is kind of in sort of structure and consistency, doing all these things. We talk about preparing our whole life but what does that actually mean? And it’s like showing up every single day, waking up early to do warmups when you’re going skiing, out on the mountain. But it’s also going to the gym every single day, even when you have other things going on, and even when your family’s having a birthday and you’re traveling overseas.
Showing up consistently over years and years is what allows you to have two times 47 seconds of really good slalom skiing. That’s where the discipline comes in. And then, alcohol, kind of pushing that aside — mostly because anytime I have a drink of something I get sick. That might be my own immune system, but I’ve just been like, hmm, there’s a pattern.
NBC News: Now that this is over with, are there things you’re looking to indulge in, whether that’s how you spend your time, or what you eat?
Shiffrin: I think I’m still sort of very much in a disciplined mindset because we still have the rest of the World Cup season. The next race is in I think a little bit under two weeks, so I have a little bit of the whirlwind to celebrate this thing (raises gold medal), and then basically get right back on snow and then train for the upcoming competitions because I have six more World Cup races for the end of the season and I’m in the lead for the overall standings right now, so there’s something to fight for. So I’m still very much in the disciplined mindset.
I joke about the espresso martini but I really only had one the other night. I really went wild, you know! I like feeling structure and feeling like I have something to work toward on a daily basis so at some point in my life I won’t have ski racing to provide that structure and I’ll need to find something else. But for now, I also do crave the discipline that this sport provides.
NBC News: On Instagram, you posted about the mantras you posted (on sticky notes around her Cortina d’Ampezzo home). Is there one specific mantra you always tell yourself right before you go through the gate?
Shiffrin: In World Cup racing it’s always I have two, technical cues. In slalom and in giant slalom they’re different from one another; also in speed that can be different. But right now in slalom, it’s just these two things, and I don’t know if it means anything to any (non-skiers). It’s ‘ankles and knees, punch and push.’ And it doesn’t really mean something to someone else but for me that helps me get in a really good mindset.
But at these Olympics, I felt like I needed a lot more external cueing. I told my team throughout the games, 'These are the things that I’m thinking about, this is what’s making me nervous, and I need you guys to keep reminding me of the mentality. Keep reminding me of the inspiration,' right? Basically, focusing between the start and finish, on the turns required between start and finish. That’s where those mantras that I stuck on my mirror came from. I normally don’t do that, but it felt like I needed a little external cueing, so my team and those mantras were super, super helpful.
NBC News: Were there things you asked your team to tell you daily?
Shiffrin: Remind me that despite fear, I still want to feel connected and powerful. They’ve heard me talk about the different feelings I’ve had with my best skiing over the years so they could remind me of that. Somebody would say, ‘Unleash.’ Someone would say, ‘Break the chains.’ Most of my mantras come from my mom, really, it’s things that she’s told me, technically, and about skiing, and also about mentality over the years. Usually it’s, ‘The more nervous you feel, the more intensity you want to have in your turns.’ So something I was also thinking about was, ‘The bigger the heartbeat, the bigger the heart.’ That was another one on slalom day.
NBC News: You can ski one mountain the rest of your life. Where, and why?
Shiffrin: (Pauses) I don’t think I can choose! I really don’t. I can’t. I can’t do it! I’m sorry. I’m setting a boundary, no, I won’t do it, I won’t choose. There’s too many amazing mountains.
NBC News: I’ll reframe it. What is the most important mountain to you?
Shiffrin: Home. In Colorado, all of the mountains are spectacular, but … I’m just not home very often. I’m traveling for probably 10 months out of the year so being home for 10 days here and eight days there and maybe two weeks at another time, then when I actually do just get to go on the chairlift with my mom and my brother and my sister-in-law, it’s maybe once a year we get to do that but those are really cherished moments.
