The first festivities turned out to be a little heartier, and now it was a rather unusual spectacle. It is true that the ski racer Mikaela Shiffrin can sincerely look forward to her successes. It is just often the case that the American woman’s thoughts are often still deeply attached to the race immediately after crossing the finish line. On Saturday, after Shiffrin’s arrival at the foot of the Rettenbach Glacier in Sölden, everything now seemed more carefree, mainly because Shiffrin’s entourage seemed more present in the finish area than usual, with a slightly different line-up. Mother and mentor Eileen embraced the ski outfitter’s staff, she embraced Shiffrin’s manager and also the 26-year-old’s new friend, the strength of his celebrities (and the bright yellow ski jacket) was an easy target for the television cameras: Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, the Norwegian who won the overall men’s world cup a year and a half ago.
Shiffrin acknowledged her performance more cautiously, as always. She stuck out her tongue briefly, relieved, smiled. With a lot of benevolence one meant to recognize a touch of exuberance. Of course, she doesn’t really need more. Her victory of the day on Saturday was her 70th in the World Cup – Lindsey Vonn, the most successful woman in this trade with 82 victories, was four years older when she passed this milestone.
Shiffrin only needed 192 attempts, so she currently wins every third race in which she competes, an incredible rate in a sport in which a groove in the ice can shatter the most beautiful plan. And so this success in Sölden, in the giant slalom, in which she won her second Olympic victory four years ago, also had a few messages ready that went beyond the bare result. For example, that the American is clearly back to full strength, as before and yet completely different.
When she started in the pre-winter, she had often forgotten the complete course setting
Shiffrin and her mother had recently recounted how deep the wounds were that had torn the previous year. At the end of January they had kicked the World Cup hamster wheel, then news hit them that Shiffrin’s father Jeff had an accident in Colorado from which he would not recover. The family struggled with the grief, Shiffrin later said that she could barely get out of bed at first.
They later tried to gradually fill the void Jeff Shiffrin had filled in the family’s ski business. The following winter, Shiffrin’s coach Mike Day said the last Washington Post, “was basically like coming back from an injury”. Except that such a wound does not heal like a cruciate ligament tear, but like a wound that remains a crack forever. As a result, Shiffrin was often at the start, in training, in the race, and realized that she had forgotten the entire course that the athletes rehearse down to the last millimeter before each run. Even in the races she kept getting lost. The fog was so thick in her head that her trainers initially signed her off from all speed races. Such uncertainties can be fatal there.
It took a while, but at some point Shiffrin realized that any tragedy can give rise to confidence, like burned forest soil that is particularly fertile for a while. She read the book by Sheryl Sandberg, the co-managing director of Facebook, whose husband had died at the age of 48. She felt how friendships were strengthened, the essentials separated from the insignificant, how the fog slowly lifted.
She got together with Kilde, a partner her mother had in the post “as medicine” described – not only because they both share a lot about skiing and learn from each other, but above all because Kilde led them on a path, also outside of sport, on which Shiffrin could “laugh again”. At the World Championships in Cortina last spring she started in four races and won four medals, gold in combination, silver in giant slalom, bronze in slalom and Super-G. Even then, people around them said that the competition could warm up as soon as Shiffrin could do her usual training schedule again.
Shiffrin is considering starting in all five disciplines at the Beijing Olympics
This point has now apparently been reached again. She wanted to find an answer to the question in Sölden: “Is this fire still there that I had before?” Said Shiffrin after her success. So this urge to put every workout, every deep squat, every nap in the service, still to get a little better?
The answer on Saturday was quite clear, as safe and easy as Shiffrin made the difficult look again, especially on the steep slope. In the end, she was 14 hundredths of a second ahead of the strong Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami, 1.30 seconds ahead of the Slovak Petra Vlhova, the overall winner of the pre-winter. The competition between the three should also shape this winter, although Shiffrin is now apparently feeling a little more comfortable in the role of the hunted than usual. Before the races in Sölden, she had even revealed that she was considering doing all five at the Winter Games in Beijing in February To start disciplines – despite the mountain-high expectations that had hit her hard at the games four years ago when she got lost on the same endeavor.
First of all, said Shiffrin, she is now looking forward to the upcoming training sessions in the USA, to the first speed races in Lake Louise, especially to the Technology World Cup at the end of November on the US east coast in Killington, which was canceled in the pre-winter . “I missed the races there so much, I almost took them for granted before,” said Shiffrin. Then she added, “This will never happen to me again.”