Mikaela Shiffrin knelt at the finish line on the Olimpia delle Tofane and thought about her dad. She'd just won Olympic slalom gold by a canyon — 1.50 seconds, the largest margin in the event since 1998. And the first thing she did was talk to a man who's been gone for six years. Later, on the TODAY show, she admitted what she'd actually said in that moment: "f***ing s**t." On live television. Which is maybe the most honest thing anyone has ever said at the Olympics.
Who's Who?
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Mikaela Shiffrin — Won the same Olympic event 12 years apart — and knelt at the finish to talk to her dead father. -
JSJeff Shiffrin — An anesthesiologist and ski racer from New Jersey who died at 65 in an accident at home.
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Aleksander Aamodt Kilde — Survived a near-fatal crash and sepsis, came all the way back, then withdrew days before the Games. -
Eileen Shiffrin — Called the winningest alpine ski coach of all time — was at every Olympics and at Jeff's side when he died. -
Camille Rast — Entered the Olympic slalom as the favorite and finished 1.50 seconds behind Shiffrin. -
Anna Swenn-Larsson — Won her first Olympic medal at her fourth consecutive Winter Games, at 33. -
KHKarin Harjo — Took over after a messy coaching split and guided Shiffrin through two injury comebacks to gold.
Jeff Shiffrin was an anesthesiologist with Vail Health who grew up skiing in New Jersey and raced at Dartmouth. He was an avid photographer. He died on February 2, 2020, at 65, from a head injury in an accident at his home in Edwards, Colorado. Mikaela was in Europe shooting a Sports Illustrated cover when he was rushed to the hospital. She has never really stopped talking to him. "I still have so many moments where I resist this — 'I don't want to be in life without my dad,'" she told Olympics.com after the race. "Maybe today was the first time that I could actually accept this reality."
The last time Shiffrin won Olympic slalom gold, she was 18 years old, at Sochi, and she became the youngest slalom champion in Olympic history — male or female. That was February 21, 2014. Twelve years later, at 30, she's now the oldest American woman to win Olympic Alpine gold too. She's the only winter Olympian to win the same event 12 years apart. Her mother Eileen — called the winningest alpine ski coach of all time — was there for both. Eileen handles logistics, planning, and the mental scaffolding that keeps the whole operation standing. She was at Jeff's side when he died. She's been at every Olympics.
What happened between Sochi and Cortina is the kind of stretch that would end most careers. At the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Shiffrin DNF'd in three of six events, went 0-for-5 in individual races, and told reporters she felt "like a joke." In January 2024, she crashed during a downhill at Cortina itself — the same mountain where she just won gold — spraining her MCL and tibia-fibula ligaments with bone bruising. Then in November 2024, a crash at Killington put a seven-centimeter-deep puncture wound in her abdomen. Surgery. Recovery. She returned to racing on January 30, 2025 — three weeks before the Olympics opened.
Her fiancé Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, the Norwegian speed skier, was supposed to be there with her. They got engaged in April 2024 during his own nightmare recovery — a severe crash at Wengen in January 2024, then sepsis during rehab, then 684 days off snow. He came all the way back. And then, on February 3, days before the Games began, he pulled out. "I have done everything I possibly could to be ready for the Olympics," Kilde wrote on Instagram, "but my mind and body are not performing the way I need them to." His back wouldn't hold. So Shiffrin raced alone.
She finished 11th in giant slalom first. Eight straight Olympic events without a medal since 2018. Then came the slalom — two runs, a combined time of 1:39.10. Switzerland's Camille Rast, who entered the race as the favorite after winning her first World Cup giant slalom victory earlier in the season at Kranjska Gora, finished 1.50 seconds back for silver, her first Olympic medal. Sweden's Anna Swenn-Larsson took bronze at her fourth consecutive Games, 1.71 seconds behind. Neither was close. Nobody was close.
When it was over and someone asked her what she'd been thinking on the course, Shiffrin kept it simple: "Stop dreaming, just ski." Her head coach Karin Harjo, who took over in June 2023 after Shiffrin's split with longtime coach Mike Day, has guided her through every injury comeback since. The three-woman coaching core — Harjo, Eileen, and Regan Dewhirst — held the whole thing together when the results weren't there.
Shiffrin's Instagram post after the race said what she couldn't say on the podium. "I questioned my toughness and tenacity. I questioned it all. And then I left those questions behind, and stepped into the arena anyway... I pushed to believe. I won. I f***ing won. This, right here, is the lottery and I won. Oh, and I got a medal too." Three Olympic golds. 110 World Cup victories — 24 more than anyone in history. A record-tying sixth overall World Cup title. The most decorated American Alpine skier who ever lived. And still, the thing she wanted most at the bottom of that hill was one more minute with her dad.