After the heartbreak of her 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics setback, Mikaela Shiffrin has stormed back into the spotlight with perfect timing before the Milano Cortina 2026 Games. The greatest skier of all time opened her season in style, clinching the Alpine Ski World Cup slalom victory at Levi, Finland. It was her 102nd career triumph and the moment she added a ninth reindeer to her legendary herd. In a touching gesture, Shiffrin named the newest addition “Winkie” after her mother, capturing an emotional moment before she sets her sights on Italy.

With this victory, the Edward, Colorado, native added another feather to her crown, earning her 65th career slalom triumph, leaving her opponents to eat her dust in the discipline. She posted a total time of 1:48:92, crossing the line decisively 1.66 seconds ahead of Albania’s rising talent, Lara Coultri. This victory marked her third straight win in Levi and her fifth in the past six seasons on the icy Finnish slope.

Winning her ninth reindeer, Shiffrin now has as many reindeer as Santa Claus’ sleigh. “Winkie is in honor of my Mom’s childhood nickname. Been a long time coming for my mom to finally get a reindeer in her name, but now it’s written,” she wrote on her X handle, sharing a photo of them. Shiffrin’s mother, Eileen Shiffrin, was the bedrock of her skiing journey from the time Mikaela was just three years old. She trained her with the dream of shaping a future world champion, and since then, Eileen has never let her daughter face any challenge alone.

According to Mikaela, her mother is her mentor, best friend, and everything in between, “Probably one of the factors that has made a difference between my career and anybody else is having her to keep me on track, to help me stay sane, to be my best friend, to be my mum, to be my coach,” Shiffrin told CNN in an interview.

Including Winkie, she has nine reindeer to her name. The others are Rudolph, Sven, Mr. Gru, Ingemar (named after former GOAT ski racer Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden), Sunny, Lorax, Grogu, and Rori. All of her nine reindeer reside at the Ounaskievari Reindeer Farm, just outside Levi, where Shiffrin can visit them at will! Now, this season opener is a big win for her, considering the fact that the skiing sensation suffered a bad fall last November, which left her afraid of competing in giant slaloms.

“I’m mentally blocked,” said Mikaela Shiffrin after facing a devastating fall in Killington

Mikaela Shiffrin has never shied away from a challenge — she’s faced adversity throughout her career, from her fall at the Beijing Olympics to a terrifying crash in Cortina d’Ampezzo in 2024. But her November 2024 crash in Killington, Vermont, was particularly brutal. What could have been her 100th World Cup victory ended in disaster on November 30, as she suffered a deep puncture wound and severe muscle trauma to her oblique muscles.

The Colorado native later revealed in a message to the Associated Press that the injury left her “mentally blocked in being able to get to the next level of pace and speed and putting power into the turns. And that kind of mental, psychological like PTSD-esque struggle is more than I anticipated.”

She added, “I figured once we touched ground in Europe and we got a chance to get some repetitive training days, I would be able to improve step by step and sort of the passion and the longing for racing was going to outweigh any fear that I had.”

Shiffrin described the physical danger as well: she told the AP that the wound was “a millimeter from pretty catastrophic.” During the crash, she said something penetrated her abdominal wall and nearly hit her colon.

Remarkably, she returned to racing on January 30, 2025, in Courchevel, finishing 10th in the slalom. Her win in Levi later that season revived her confidence — and raised new questions about her chances heading into the 2026 Milano–Cortina Winter Olympics.