Two-time Olympic gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin was born in Colorado, where she recently designed her own custom-built house. But every time the 26-year-old skis in Vermont — where she graduated from the grade 9-12 Burke Mountain Academy in the Northeast Kingdom — she says the same thing.
“This is a home crowd, this is a home race — it’s just that home feeling.”
The Green Mountain State is the place where Shiffrin first took to the slopes as a child, trained as a teenager and returned as a 20-something to win every Killington World Cup slalom race since the international circuit’s lone U.S. women’s competition began in 2016.
“I specifically remember the waffles that were absolutely delicious,” she told the press last Thanksgiving weekend when asked for her earliest Vermont memory. “Shows you where my head is most of the time.”
But as she tops her sport’s current overall standings, Shiffrin is also thinking about skiing.
“I can definitely get a little bit stuck in an ‘I have to win, I’m supposed to win, everybody expects me to win’ mentality,” she said in a recent interview. “It feels very lonely and crippling at times.”
The past two years of heartache haven’t helped.
Shiffrin won gold at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and snagged gold and silver at the 2018 games in PyeongChang, South Korea. Then her 65-year-old father died unexpectedly in February 2020, followed by the Covid-19 pandemic that March, a back injury that October and cancellation of the Killington World Cup that November.
Sports Illustrated summed up Shiffrin’s 2020 as a “grieve-and-train-and-ski-and-rehab, try-to-make-sense-of-what-no-longer-does year.”
Shiffrin returned to Vermont three months ago for the return of the Killington World Cup and, after a foot of blowing and drifting snow canceled a Friday training run and Saturday giant slalom, ultimately won the Sunday slalom.
“What is it about this place, Killington?” NBC commentator Dan Hicks told a national audience watching the live coverage. “The magic of it, how special it is for Mikaela Shiffrin.”
Off the air, the skier crowned the “Queen of Killington” offered a bittersweet answer.
“I have so many really, really wonderful memories of Killington with my family, with my dad,” she said.
In Olympic years, the Vermont event has offered Shiffrin one last “home feeling” before she faces an avalanche of public hopes and press hype.
This winter brought an extra, unexpected punch.
Two days after Christmas, the skier — who is vaccinated and boosted — tested positive for the coronavirus and found herself quarantined for more than a week with instructions not to go outside or raise her heart or breathing rate through exercise.
Yet six weeks later, Shiffrin and three other U.S. teammates (including fellow Vermont-trained gold medalist Jessie Diggins) are headlined “World Beaters” on the current cover of Sports Illustrated.
“Here’s the thing about being Mikaela Shiffrin in 2022,” The Washington Post squeezed into the following sentence: “She is the 26-year-old American face of the games, the athlete NBC tabbed to ski race with dinosaurs while cross-promoting a new ‘Jurassic Park’ film, the personality most likely to appear on the ‘Today’ show, the most familiar and famous of the 223 athletes who make up Team USA.”
Collectively, it’s figuratively and literally half a world away from that childhood plate of waffles.
“I get mail and quite a few Instagram messages from young skiers who travel to Killington to watch me race,” Shiffrin said during her most recent Vermont visit. “Hearing about their passion for the sport and how much they want to succeed, I’m like, ‘I’m you, I know, I get it, I relate.’ You would think that would change after a while, but it doesn’t. I still see myself in the same position I was 10 years ago, 15 years ago.”
Except she’s not.
“Every single race is a full-on battle now. I would like to think that my fastest skiing will be consistently in contention with the fastest in the world, but we can only find out on race day.”
Media outlets as far-flung as the political prognosticator FiveThirtyEight are noting Shiffrin could soon overtake the likes of the late Rutland-born Andrea Mead Lawrence, who still holds the American record she set in 1952 for snagging two alpine gold medals at one Olympics.
Shiffrin, however, isn’t thinking about history.
“My biggest goal this season is to set aside the vanity that comes with expectations that I’m supposed to win just because I have done it in the past. No matter what you’ve done in the past, you still, in order to win now, need to win now. I’m capable of some really fast skiing, but I’ve got to do it.”
As a result, she’s concentrating on concentrating.
“I ski my best when I’m able to focus on what I’m doing, despite whatever might be around. It’s not really blocking out the noise as much as it is being able to see my path through it. I just want to take it step by step, day by day, and try to keep more of the grateful attitude that I feel.”
Shiffrin is planning to participate in all five skiing disciplines: the giant slalom, slalom, super-G, downhill and combined, with information about her ever-changing schedule available on NBCOlympics.com.
“Given everything that has gone on with the pandemic and the challenges we’ve all faced, I’m trying to just keep in mind that we’re lucky to be doing this,” she said. “Letting go of all preconceived notions of what it’s supposed to be just because of what it has been — that’s going to be my best bet for bringing out my best skiing and seeing what is possible now.”
Find out how to watch Shiffrin and the two dozen athletes with Vermont ties here.
