Ski racer Mikaela Shiffrin already owns two Olympic gold medals and seven world championship titles, more wins than any alpine skier in history, an ESPY for best athlete in women’s sports, and eight reindeer (yes, actual reindeer—more on that in a bit).
On February 23, the 29-year-old further cemented her spot in history by reaching a milestone few people—herself included—believed to be possible, notching her 100th career victory in the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, the sport’s top international circuit, in Sestriere, Italy. In the slalom, she finished 0.61 seconds ahead of a Croatian Zrinka Ljutic to earn the top spot on the podium, while her US teammate Paula Moltzan nabbed third.
The triumphant moment came less than three months after a scary crash that threatened her season—and her health. After Shiffrin notched her 99th win in Gurgl, Austria, all eyes were on her as she headed into the Stifel Killington Cup in Vermont on November 30. And when she led after the first run of the giant slalom, hopes were high that she’d hit the 100-win mark on what was essentially home snow. (She’d trained for years at the nearby Burke Mountain Academy.)
But about a minute and 40 seconds into her second run, one of her skis caught and she fell, crashing into two gates before hitting the protective fencing. Somewhere during the tumble, something—she thinks it was her ski pole—stabbed her in the oblique, a muscle along the side of her torso. (Her YouTube video about the accident was titled “I’ve Been Impaled.”)
The crash itself was terrifying, and recovery was “anything but straightforward or easy,” Shiffrin tells SELF. On December 12, she had an unplanned surgery to drain a deep portion of the seven-centimeter-deep wound. Though that required some extra downtime for healing, the pace of her recovery picked up afterward. She announced her return to the slopes on January 23 and began racing soon after.
Shiffrin’s win in Sestriere was her second World Cup slalom race back after the crash in November. She developed PTSD after Killington and had only returned to the giant slalom, the event where she crashed, this weekend, sitting it out at the World Championships earlier this month. She finished 25th in that race, just the day before winning the slalom for her 100th World Cup victory.
In conjunction with her achievement, Shiffrin will be partnering with an organization called Share Winter Foundation—which aims to bring a broader, more diverse community to the slopes—to raise $100,000 for learn-to-ski-and-snowboard programs for youth who otherwise would not have access to these sports. Earlier in the season and again before returning to race after her injury, SELF caught up with Shiffrin to hear more about her speedy return, what the milestone means (both for her and the next generation of athletes), how she handles the pressure that comes with it, the importance of athletes’ mental health, and what she’d tell her younger self about reaching her dreams. Here’s what she had to say.
SELF: How does it feel to reach this milestone?
Mikaela Shiffrin: In the past, I have shied away from the numbers questions. The records were never something I set out to achieve. My goal was to be one of the greatest ski racers in the world—not one of the greatest ski racers of all time, just at any given moment in time. When I was a little girl, I dreamt about winning the overall globe—the overall World Cup season title—as well as the individual slalom and giant slalom globes [two of the individual disciplines that make up the World Cup].
Flash forward to where we are now, and this is far beyond anything I had ever imagined for my career. I feel like nobody should have ever been in a position to be here in the sport, and I don’t know why I am. I mean, I get it—hard work, a great team around me, all the tangible pieces that have built up to this moment. But if you think about it as a deeper, more philosophical question of, “Why me?” I couldn’t tell you. There’s a lot to be grateful for in this moment, and that’s what I’m feeling.
Did you even think it was possible at this point after your injury?
Coming back this season at all is a win, and then coming back so soon is, in and of itself, another physical and mental barrier overcome. To think about all the hype around my 100th victory before I crashed—I felt so far away from that world and that space when I returned. Where I was with my team, we had to be protective of our space. The victory count was just so off our radar. Still, we didn’t count anything out.
The injury gave me an opportunity to work on deficiencies with my core that I probably needed to work on, but we were always in high-level competition and there was never time to go back to rudimentary basics. What I’m most excited about now is the opportunity to show that over time—the rest of the season and into next season, which is a big year for many reasons—I can come back even stronger.
What was going through your mind right after the crash? And how did your emotions about it all shift as your recovery progressed—especially when you had surgery and had to slow down a little bit?
It’s been a whirlwind of emotions. Any athlete who gets injured would always choose to be in the position to be able to return in the same season, so I feel really lucky. When I walked in my hotel room in Courchevel [the week of my first race back], I just started crying, looking back on the [previous] eight weeks and reflecting.
That was one of the most traumatic crashes I’ve had. I’ve never felt that kind of pain in my life. It brought a whole new level of perspective and understanding of how fragile our bodies are. On the one hand, we’re very strong; on the other hand, small mistakes can happen, and we’re skiing at such speeds and with such force that the impact can be huge.
We crash in ski racing. It happens all the time. But this was a seven-centimeter-deep puncture wound that nearly broke through my colon. And that was like, ‘Holy crap. This is just scary.’ The first two weeks were insane. I had a wound vac [a device that suctions out fluids and debris to help a wound heal], and then we were packing the wound. After surgery, I had a drainage tube. These are not things we deal with in ski racing. This is what war vets experience—this is for stab wounds, gunshot wounds. If I think too much about it, I kind of get shivers. It’s just a whirlwind of emotions, how lucky I was in the face of being a little bit unlucky.
You came back far sooner than even you might have originally anticipated. What were some of the most important things you did during rehab, physically and mentally, that got you back so quickly?
I’ve spent a lot of time in the gym, a lot of time with my physical therapist, doing very fundamental work of core strength—trying to reactivate my core, once I could make that connection with the muscle at all.
The puncture wound acts like a torn muscle, because whatever punctured me severed the muscle. I could feel there was no connection between the muscle fibers in a section of my obliques. For two weeks straight, I was basically leaning—if I sat straight, or if I stood straight, my right side would lose connection and it was very painful.
After three weeks, they had to open it up further, so that created more damage. At that point in time, I could not imagine making a ski turn, with all the lateral forces. It was like, “This doesn’t feel like I’m ever gonna be able to get back. I can’t get out of bed.” But I trusted what the medical team around me was working on. My physical therapist created a road map based on the research she was doing. She treated it like a tear, severe muscle trauma. It was a very methodical, step-by-step process.
There was also an important balance between pushing to my limit each step of the way, but not pushing over the limit. More is not better with this case, because it could create other injuries or a more chronic injury of this muscle. We’ve been strategic with working the rest of my body when I wasn’t able to activate my obliques, then adding core [exercises] as my pain started getting better. It was somehow both patient and always at the limit, every step of the way. That’s a tough balance to strike, but being here now, I think we did it quite well.
What does this milestone mean for you and the sport, and for women’s sports overall?
People have been asking me about the numbers for years. I think the first time I realized people were starting to count was when I hit 50. I’ve started to learn how to be able to try to block out the noise around the record, because it can be something that adds pressure.
But now that it’s here, I think it’s a tangible representation of the concept that past generations in the sport paved the way for future generations. I’m hoping to make it more about what can come in the future versus what I’ve done. If you just focus on the number, it’s all about what Mikaela achieves. But when you focus on something else beyond that, it makes it more than a milestone, takes it beyond a record. It’s certainly a lot more meaningful for me than the number itself, which is something that I don’t have a huge feeling about on its own.
You mentioned pressure. Can you talk more about how you handle other people’s expectations both when things are going well and when they aren’t, such as when you were disqualified in two events during the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing? You’ve described your approach as letting the noise flow through you, rather than either ignoring it or fixating on it—is that still the way you think about it, and if so, how do you implement that?
Yes, absolutely. There are definitely certain days and certain times of the month when I tend to latch onto comments more than others. But if I’m feeling like my preparation is in place, then I can channel up my focus or my intensity. Then anything that comes—any stimulus, anything that people say around me, whether it’s my own team, my coaches, fans, or media—I accept the stimulus, and then I’m like, “Okay, that’s over. I’m moving to the next thing.”
I need an anchor point with an actual, tangible, technical focus so that as soon as that conversation or interaction is over, I can get back to it. For example, in slalom, my cue has been consistent for quite some time. I think about my ankles and knees and drive through the turn. It’s that simple. It’s something that clicks. People talk about a flow state or being in the zone; that’s kind of how I consider it. It’s not that I don’t hear anything, it’s just that I spend less time on whatever noise comes through.
What self-care practices help you perform your best and manage your mental health?
Before Beijing, I was talking with a sport psychologist, and it was helpful to a point. Honestly, I feel like my mom has been one of my greatest sport psychologists. She knows me better than anybody, so she helps me dive into the history of my mentality.
But the last couple of years, since my dad passed away [her father, Jeff, died unexpectedly in 2020], I felt like some of the challenges I faced mentally and emotionally existed outside of the field of sports. It was the first time that I started speaking with a clinical psychologist. It’s been tough to have consistent meetings, but I try my best to get sessions in when things are intense.
It’s been extremely helpful for me to understand more about myself. I’m fairly self-aware, but it’s been about diving into the thoughts I have and validating them, and also being able to flip it and see another side of the coin. It helps me understand how I communicate what I’m thinking and feeling, especially with the team around me. I’m in kind of a management position, and learning how to communicate in a way that is clear and beneficial for all of those working around me has also been a journey.
Thanks for sharing that. It’s important to highlight the difference between sport psychology, which focuses a lot on performance, and the clinical side, which is about more general mental health. Some therapists do both, but there’s a distinction.
They do leak into each other a lot, and for athletes, it’s easy to think, “I’m taking care of everything I need to because I’m talking with my sport psych.” But for me, there’s been a lot of personal strife over the years, and things that surface that actually don’t relate to the sport at all. The sport, skiing, is where I feel the most at home. Figuring out how to feel more at home with myself outside of skiing has been a bigger issue for me.
There’s been such a shift in recent years, with more athletes talking about mental health. What has it been like to be a part of that? And have you seen actual changes come about because of it?
Even when I first started racing in the World Cup, we weren’t talking about it. Over the last 5 or 10 years, we’ve been learning more about athletes and the different interests they have. It’s a fine line, because as an athlete, you want to have some level of private life, right? But at the same time, sharing a bit about life outside of the sport helps the rest of the world and fans of the sport understand you.
It’s such a cringe thing when I hear people say, “Athletes are humans.” I’m like, “Yeah, duh.” The fact is, when a lot of people envision an athlete, they think: wake up, train, maybe eat sometimes, sleep, maybe eat again, train, compete, go to sleep. But there are moments in between. We have personal relationships and family and trauma, loss and tragedy, finances and issues with bills and credit, all of the things that everybody has to deal with.
Then we have to perform on a world stage, knowing that most of the world feels like, “Well, this is what you do, and it should be easy and we expect it, and if you don’t do it, that’s going to be a problem.” Let’s just keep talking about the pressures and anxiety we feel, because I think people are starting to get it.
I love that you’re able to hold that hard stuff with the more lighthearted moments of enjoying the sport. For instance, being able to name a reindeer when you win a race in Levi, Finland! I know you added an eighth to your existing herd—Rori (short for “Aurora Borealis”)—when you claimed your 98th victory on November 16. Where are they, and do you visit them?
The reindeer stay in Finland, in Levi. My brother and his wife came to watch the race last year and they wanted to go see them. So we went to visit them for the first time!
You mentioned your dream early on, and you’ve written about it before—that from as young as nine years old, you wanted to be the best in the world. I’m curious if you feel like you’ve made that dream come true, and what you’d say to young Mikaela if you could go back and show her what the future would hold.
When I was little, I would watch Bodhi Miller ski; he was my biggest idol. And Marlies Schild and Marcel Hirscher and Hermann Maier and Lindsay Vonn, of course—I watched all of the greatest in the sport. I’d think, “They’re the best, so I want to be the best.” I didn’t really know what qualified that, but the most obvious thing was the season titles, winning races, the overall globe, those kinds of things.
That goal has driven me. It’s been broad enough that even when I hit 50, or when I hit 87 or even now at 99 and 100, people ask why I’m so motivated. The answer is that I still have the capability to be one of the best ski racers in the world, and as long as I have that ability, I’m willing to try. It’s hard, but it’s a challenge that I want to take on.
If I were to somehow be able to talk to myself or see myself as a younger girl, I’m not sure I would want to say or do anything. It would be nice to know at the time that this is something that I could look forward to. But I didn’t ever care about winning 100 personally; I cared about everything that could happen along the way. And that’s been such a beautiful experience, I feel like I’d want it all to be a surprise.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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