After claiming an emotional Olympic gold, Mikaela Shiffrin had one person in her mind. “For my dad, who didn’t get to see this. This was a moment I had dreamed about,” she said. After a long 8-year drought, Shiffrin won her first Olympic medal since PyeongChang. And it did not come easy. 

Shiffrin struggled in the team event, letting slip the No.1 position handed to her by her teammate. She finished 15th individually and 4th as a team. In giant slalom, she was slightly better, getting the hang of Olympic pressure and the location. But still came in 11th. When competing in Slalom, however, Shiffrin did not look laggy at all. She had an immense first run, leaving others in the dust. Shiffrin closed out the 2nd run with ease, stomping her way to the gold. However, after taking a breath after the victory, Shiffrin revealed why she had once been afraid to win on the heels of the emotional loss of her father, Jeff. 

“Winning an Olympic medal without him. It was terrifying to me before I knew that it was in Beijing. I didn’t know that I was scared when I walked away from Beijing,” She told CBS Sports. “I realized there was some small bit of relief that I didn’t have to experience a world where I could win an Olympic medal, and my dad is not alive because you wanted him there.”

Jeff unexpectedly died from a head trauma on February 2, 2020, at just 65 years old. It was a massive loss for Shiffrin. A leg of her emotional backbone suddenly no longer existed. Shiffrin even admitted struggling to continue skiing. He was the one who taught her to ski. The combination of these emotional hurdles with Olympic pressure meant Shiffrin couldn’t perform at her best. And like she said, subconsciously, she did not even want to. 

Leading up to the Olympics, she returned close to her old self. Shiffrin grabbed the World Cup Slalom title for a record 9th time. In her last race before the Games, it was the record-extending 108th of her World Cup career and 71st in slalom. She won by her biggest margin of the 2025-26 campaign. However, even after winning the Olympic gold medal, she admitted to still working through those feelings. 

“That’s still awful, like I work with a psychologist regularly, but you know it was back in, I think probably July, when I first talked to her about these concerns around the Olympics and saying, like. I don’t know that I want to win,” Shiffrin said. 

To add another layer to her already complex mental state, Mikaela Shiffrin endured two major crashes in 2024 – first at the World Cup downhill on the Olympia delle Tofane course, and later that year at the Stifel Killington Cup giant slalom. The aftermath left her grappling with serious psychological challenges, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

She even withdrew from the giant slalom at the previous year’s Alpine World Championships. Yet, despite the setbacks, Shiffrin stayed fiercely committed to her goals, and now, having finally shaken off the Olympic pressure, she’s rediscovering the joy in her sport.

Mikaela Shiffrin Has Her First Drink In Two Years, Get’s 1 Word Reaction From Taylor Swift

After her win, she was asked what the celebration was. She reveled in the cathartic victory that included a stop at Team Austria’s house in Cortina d’Ampezzo. At the gathering, Shiffrin finally had her first drink in almost two years, an espresso martini, which she said was her first drink in at least two years, as she recovered from the punctured wound. 

“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,” Shiffrin said. She also commemorated the moment by posting a pic from her winning run on Instagram. 

It had a quote from Taylor Swift‘s The Life of a Showgirl track “Ruin the Friendship.” Shiffrin included in the caption, “My advice is always ruin the friendship.” Swift, who narrated the introduction for figure skaters, commented under the post in all caps, “HISTORIC.” The gold medalist was delighted to catch the pop star’s attention.

Later, Mikaela Shiffrin reposted the image along with the song. A few slides later, another repost of the original image with her shocked reaction to the Swift shoutout, which read, “Ummmm,” further adding a series of starstruck and welling eyes emojis.