Mikaela Shiffrin, the queen of slopes who found strength in pain

SINGAPORE – Mikaela Shiffrin has more in common with Santa Claus than one may think – both are deeply at home in the snow, carve their way through wintry landscapes at high speeds, and now each has a herd of nine reindeer.

After

winning the season’s first World Cup slalom race

at Levi in Finland on Nov 15, Shiffrin’s stable grew to nine, following a tradition in which the victor at the venue is rewarded with a reindeer, which is kept at a farm.

This latest addition named Winkie joins the likes of Rudolph, Sven, Mr Gru, Ingemar, Sunny, Lorax, Grogu and Rori, a quirky testament to Shiffrin’s growing legacy in the sport, with a record 102 World Cup victories already to the 30-year-old American’s name.

But her latest triumph forms only one chapter of a larger story – one defined not just by her dominance on the slopes, but also the resilience required to confront personal struggles off them.

A brutal fall and a new kind of pain

The past year has tested Shiffrin like never before. In November 2024, what had looked set to become a historic moment in Killington, Vermont – the site of what could have been her 100th World Cup win – instead became one of the most harrowing days of her career.

Leading the second leg of a giant slalom race, she crashed out near the end of the run, somersaulting into the safety nets. The impact left her with a puncture wound and muscle damage to her stomach.

In her sport, pain is a familiar companion.

In an entry in The Players’ Tribune, she said: “Pain is part of the whole deal. All of our backs are a mess. You have knee soreness basically 24/7.

“And that’s before you even get to the falling part – the tumbling over, the getting bent and twisted all around because of how fast you’re moving.”

But this was something different, with Shiffrin describing it as “not only was there a knife stabbing me, but the knife was actually still inside of me”.

Twelve days later, she underwent surgery. But it was not just the physical pain that lingered. The emotional toll of the crash left her struggling with something even more challenging – post-traumatic stress disorder.

Returning from the abyss

After two months out injured, she returned to competition at the Slalom World Cup in Courchevel, France, before she secured

a record-equalling 15th career world championships medal

 – a gold – in Saalbach, Austria, in February.

Still, the ghosts of that crash in Killington were never far from her thoughts.

She told the BBC: “Sometimes I’ll get a random vision of crashing. It might not be the Killington crash, it could be the course in front of me, that I have this random vision that I’m in the nets again and something else is stabbing through me.”

She admitted in The Players’ Tribune that on tough days, she would question everything, her motivation and her desire to continue.

But that same month, she achieved what had slipped from her grasp in Vermont. In Sestriere, Italy, she claimed a historic 100th alpine skiing World Cup win with victory in the slalom, making her the first skier – male or female – to reach the landmark.

A legacy built on family

Shiffrin’s path to greatness was rooted in family.

She was introduced to the sport by her parents Eileen and Jeff, both competitive skiers, and at three, was already skiing down the driveway of their family home in Vail, Colorado, before quickly moving to the slopes.

Her rise was meteoric. By 16, she made her World Cup debut, earning her first podium finish during her rookie season.

A year later, she secured her first World Cup victory and first World Cup slalom title.

She continued to make her mark on the international stage. Just shy of her 19th birthday, she qualified for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, where she became the youngest women’s slalom champion in the Games’ history. She added the giant slalom title in 2018.

But as the medals accumulated, so did the pressure and she began to experience performance anxiety around 2016.

She told Elle: “No matter how much success I’ve had in my career, it was like a constant battle of trying to prove my worth.”

Then came the sudden death of her father in 2020, after he sustained a severe head injury in a fall at home.

The years that followed were bruising. In the lead-up to the 2022 Winter Olympics, she suffered a severe back strain, and Beijing became a Games to forget with disqualifications in three events and no podium finishes.

She apologised to fans for her performance in the giant slalom, pushed back against online trolls who accused her of choking and later wrote openly about the grief she faced since her father’s death.

Reflecting on the moment, she told Elle: “My best moment at the Olympics ended up being me just trying to communicate what was actually going through my head and hoping that somebody out there might be reading it and thinking, ‘That’s how I feel today’.”

It was a moment of raw honesty – one that humanised her even as she continued to achieve the extraordinary.

While she has had a strong start to the Alpine Ski World Cup season, also securing a fourth-place finish in the giant slalom in Solden, Austria, in October, Shiffrin is careful not to get ahead of herself.

She said: “I feel as motivated as ever, but I also feel realistic about the position I’m in.

“The overall (title) is a beautiful thing to dream about and those dreams haven’t stopped for me. But right now, I’m taking the season step by step.”