Thursday afternoon, roughly one month from the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, Mikaela Shiffrin was still a bit out of breath from a slalom training session in Austria. But it felt good, and not just because Shiffrin, an eight-time Olympic and world champion, is once again atop the Alpine World Cup overall standings.
“I finally feel like myself again,” she said in a phone interview.
Ten weeks ago, as she sat in the kitchen of her Colorado home, Shiffrin all but predicted her comeback after nearly two years mourning the accidental death of her father, a series of nettlesome injuries and uneven results (by her record-setting standards). She was also peeved that some in the ski racing community had already began writing her off.
“Like, seriously people, how quick are you to forget?” she said, her voice rising. “When a devastating thing happens, it’s like coming back from a significant injury. I hadn’t lost my ability or lost my fire, I was just healing, OK?”
As Shiffrin, 26, prepares for the Beijing Games, she has weathered a race season vastly different than the ones that preceded her appearances at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, when she became the youngest slalom gold medalist, or the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, when she won gold and silver medals. For example, last week, because of a positive coronavirus test, she spent nine days quarantined in Central Europe — “mostly sitting around or lying down in a room,” she said — and prohibited from any exercise that would raise her heartbeat or breathing rate. Barred from going outside, she gingerly flexed two fitness bands and gently lifted a kettlebell.