By Dana O’Neil, CNN
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (CNN) — When she finally crossed the finish line a second-and-a-half faster than anyone else, Mikaela Shiffrin did the strangest thing.
Nothing. She did nothing.
As the memory of eight races, four year and whatever other numbers that people used to reduce a lifetime of achievement into a dollop of futility finally, emphatically, disappeared – Shiffrin stood motionless.
The crowd around her erupted. Her poles dangled by her side. Her eyes looked back up the mountain.
Finally – in what felt like an eternity but really was only a few seconds – she quietly crouched down, bent her head over her skis and stared at the snow. To people who presume – because that is what we all do about athletes and famous people, we presume their emotions, their intentions, their thoughts – this was Shiffrin tossing the weight of the world off her back.
The greatest slalom skier in history had finally skied like the greatest slalom skier in history at the one race that most people pay attention to. Sandwiching together two epic runs, Shiffrin breezed to her first Olympic gold medal in eight years, her first in the slalom in 12, in what can only be termed a blowout. The 1.5-second gap between her and silver medalist Camille Rust may as well have been a canyon – that same difference separated Rust from 13th place Martina Peterlini of Italy.
Except at that moment, Shiffrin wasn’t thinking about the medal or the misses, the achievements or the failures. She was thinking about her dad.
An anesthesiologist in his day job and an avid photographer on the side, Jeff Shiffrin grew up skiing. Every weekend that he could, he’d trek from his New Jersey home to Vermont to hit the slopes, eventually parlaying that into a spot on the Dartmouth ski team. He and his wife, Eileen – also a skier – naturally turned their kids loose on the slopes.
In February 2020, Jeff Shiffrin slipped off the roof at their family’s home in Denver. Shiffrin and her mother, who were in Europe for competitions, flew home. Jeff died while his daughter lay with her head on his heart, hearing it take its last beat. Since then, Shiffrin agonized when people who’d similarly lost their loved ones said they felt their presence.
She just didn’t. “Like what the f**k?” she said. “Why do you get to feel that and I don’t?’’
When she stood at the base of the Olimpia delle Tofane, her time in green and her name atop the leaderboard, Shiffrin still didn’t feel her father; she felt something even stronger.
She felt at peace.
With his loss, with her skiing, with what all this epic journey of a career has meant.
“Everything in life you do after you lose someone you love is like a new experience,’’ Shiffrin said, the gold medal dangling just inside her Team USA jacket.
“It’s like being born again. And I still have so many moments where I resist this. I don’t want to be in this life without my dad but maybe today was the first time I could actually accept like, this is reality. And instead of thinking I would be going in this moment without him, to take the moment and be silent with him.’’
History rewrites her story
Hers was a victory of historic accomplishment.
She is now both the youngest (18) and oldest (30) woman to win Olympic Alpine gold, and the only winter Olympian to win the same event with a 12-year gap in between. She is the first US skier to capture three Olympic golds and won her latest by the largest slalom margin of victory since 1998. So many firsts, so many things to underscore Shiffrin’s impact on her sport.
This is what the public will cling to because this is what we know, what we’ve been allowed to see. So burdensome had Shiffrin’s failures